Do mental units obfuscatae essential differences?

Metaphysics and Epistemology
1

In another thread, a troll sneered at the very notion of objective concepts. I would like to use it to talk about the topic. :slight_smile:

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the common source of reference objectivists use for defining terms is any and all of Ayn Rand’s works. I strongly suggest you get on with reading them as I experienced the same lengthy discourse as a result of my lack of exposure to Rand.

This presumes that cognition is subjective, that any conceivable definition of a word is valid EXCEPT the one offered by Ayn Rand.

Funnily enough, that’s probably why it’s such a headache (For both parties) when an objectivist discusses an issue with a non-objectivist as the non-objectivist has made the careless mistake of assuming that dictionary definitions apply to whatever they may be debating.

The problem with dictionary definitions of philosophically important words is that they are often rationally unusable. Package-deals and anti-concepts are what most peopke expect for words like “selfish”. You cannot use the mental short circuit that this word connotes for most people, even if you wanted to. A package deal conflates two exact opposites, in this case production and destruction.

In a different thread, someone used the word “externality.” This word is often used by economists to mean “a secondary or unintended consequence” (www.m-w.com). Pollution is the textbook example. The problem with this word is that it serves to obliterate the concept of “rights”. One does not think of the absolute right of property, but the myriad of potential secondary consequences of one’s actions.

Ultimately, the reference for one’s concepts is reality. Do one’s mental units subsume essentially similar instances, or do they obfuscate and conflate essential differences?

The former is not only necessary for communicating with other people, but also for clear thinking.

2

It doesn’t look like you have a question, and I must it admit your overall point is eluding me (i.e., I don’t know if you are asking for a response to something). That may just be because of my different vocabulary :smiley: . Consequently, these are just thoughts provoked by your post:

The problem with dictionary definitions of philosophically important words is that they are often rationally unusable. Package-deals and anti-concepts are what most peopke expect for words like “selfish”. You cannot use the mental short circuit that this word connotes for most people, even if you wanted to.

Didn’t she use the word “selfish” to be deliberately provocative? I don’t mean “deliberately provocative” in the shallow sense of shock-value for shock-value’s sake. What I mean is: she wanted to engage people’s “mental short circuit” and overcome it.

She had other roughly equivalent terms with an established philosophical pedigree that she could have tweaked for her purposes (e.g.,“enlightened self-interest” or “rational egoism”), but she wanted to use a more vivid and problematic word to overcome her readers’ knee-jerk value-judgments. “Selfish” produces a knee-jerk connotation and confusion in the reader (as you noted above). The very notion of a “virtue” of selfishness is shocking and completely counter-intuitive.

Consequently, if you can learn to see “selfish” in Rand’s way, then you can learn to question accepted dogmas. The word was employed not just out of a desire to use a term with a little more emotive force than “enlightened self-interest”: it was employed to produce an implicit and compressed lesson in what it takes to form independent, rational judgments.

So we have some basic premises:

  1. Language does not create reality (that’s actually a fundamental premise of a correct metaphysics and epistemology).

  2. In order to communicate knowledge about the facts of reality we are not confined to the pre-existing or stable usage of a term or subject-phrase (i.e., truth is the result of a correspondence between a mental concept and an indepedent fact of reality, not between a sign and a concept).

  3. In principle, you don’t need Objectivist techinical vocabularly to express complete and accurate Objectivist ideas.

  4. In practice, philosophy usually depends on such precise and consisent use of terms because equivocation between a technical and non-technical meaning of a term can easily breed confusion. Common sense terms can also be misleading in themselves, when they are standing in for common prejudices.

  5. The flipside of (4) is that once the technical terms get defined narrowly they can be used automatically, without a full volitional process of thought.

An analogy for clarifying (5) would be that a person’s cognitive process becomes computational rather than discursive. The calcified mind acts like a computer in that it pasively accepts data as an input, performs an automatic algorithm on it (i.e., uses the right terms in the right predetermined combination), and then just as automatically produces an output or “conclusion.” I submit that it is hard to know in practice when (5) is occurring. It is much easier to spot someone else falling into such a pattern than catching it in yourself.

3

Reason’s Ember writes:

truth is the result of a correspondence between a mental concept and an indepedent fact of reality, not between a sign and a concept

FYI, this is not, as stated, the Objectivist position. Truth is the grasp of a fact, not of the relationship between a proposition in reality (I have no idea what a “mental concept” refers to…what other kind of concept is there?).

This is important because unlike some correspondence theories, Objectivism does not endorse the idea that we throw out a bunch of propositions and then engage in a fevered search for the relationship between those propositions and reality, which supposedly exists apart from our knowledge. We grasp facts, not the relationships between ideas and facts - ideas are the form in which we recognize facts.

4

truth is the result of a correspondence between a mental concept and an indepedent fact of reality, not between a sign and a concept

FYI, this is not, as stated, the Objectivist position.  Truth is the grasp of a fact, not of the relationship between a proposition in reality …

“‘Truth’ is the attribute of an idea in somebody’s consciousness (the relationship of that idea to the facts of reality) and it cannot exist apart from a consciousness.”

–Ayn Rand, Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 528.

5

“‘Truth’ is the attribute of an idea in somebody’s consciousness (the relationship of that idea to the facts of reality) and it cannot exist apart from a consciousness.”

–Ayn Rand, Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 528.

I’m not sure if this was meant in contradistinction to my definition (which is directly from Rand’s published writings). Rand would not say, for example, that an arbitrary idea that happened to correctly describe the world is true. In that regard, the quote you provide is somewhat troubling. It amounts to “Truth is the relationship of an idea in someone’s consciousness to the facts of reality” which sunders truth from the recognition of facts. I suppose you could say the relationship between an idea and reality is determined, not just by the state of reality, but the status of the idea in someone’s mind, but that’s a confusing way to look at it. In any case, I’ll stick with the definition Rand used in her published works - “Truth is the grasp of a fact of reality.”

6

In any case, I’ll stick with the definition Rand used in her published works - “Truth is the grasp of a fact of reality.”

Another definition I have seen her use, which is very close to yours - “Truth is a correct identification of a fact(s) of reality”

IMO, this one is a little more accurate, because it specifies that the identification (or grasp, in the case of your definition) must be correct in regard to the actual fact(s) of reality in order to be truth.

7

I’m not sure if this was meant in contradistinction to my definition (which is directly from Rand’s published writings).

First, I think you would be hard-pressed to find the exact words you used in any of Ayn Rand’s writings.

Second, I was responding not to the positive characterization of truth which you wrote, but to your negating remark about “relationship.”. You wrote

“Truth is the grasp of a fact, not of the relationship between a proposition in reality …”

The quote I provided by Ayn Rand was meant to counter your negation of “relationship.” Miss Rand’s quote was not meant as a formal definition. I selected only a portion from an extended discussion, one which spoke of “relationship.” I also could have quoted the following from OPAR (page 65):

“The concept of ‘truth’ identifies a type of relationship between a proposition and the facts of reality.”

I think the recognition of “relationship” to be quite important because the very notion of the “objective” means a relationship, one between your mind and reality.

“The objective approach involves a relationship between existence and consciousness.” OPAR, page 244.

I’ll stick with the definition Rand used in her published works - “Truth is the grasp of a fact of reality.”

When you put words in quotes and attribute them to others, you should provide a citation. There is nothing wrong with those words per se, but, as far as I know, they were not uttered by Ayn Rand in her “published works.” A citation can prove me wrong.

Similar words were said in Galt’s speech (Atlas, p. 935)

“Truth is the recognition of reality.”

Note also in ITOE (p. 111) Peikoff states “Truth is the identification of a fact of reality.”

Personally, I think the best stated defintion of truth was in ITOE, p. 48, where Ayn Rand says

“Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality.”

I like this because of the use of “product,” underscoring the objective nature of truth.

8

“Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality.”

I like this because of the use of “product,” underscoring the objective nature of truth.

I am in agreement w/you on this point, Stephen, but I do think it is necessary to specify that the recognition or identification is correct. It is possible for a person to be mistaken in how they identify something. A false identification is not truth.

9

I am in agreement w/you on this point, Stephen, but I do think it is necessary to specify that the recognition or identification is correct.

But “correct” would be almost redundant in that definition. To identify a fact of reality is to be correct.

It is possible for a person to be mistaken in how they identify something. A false identification is not truth.

Sure, but it is only after the fact that this becomes known to him. At the time he made what he thought was a correct identification. Afterwards he could say “I thought I had the truth, but I was mistaken. I had a justified belief, but that was not the truth.” Man is not omniscient, so truth is contextual.

10

Afterwards he could say “I thought I had the truth, but I was mistaken. I had a justified belief, but that was not the truth.”

This is exactly my point. A “truth” that is later proved to be false was never really a truth to begin with.

11

FYI, this is not, as stated, the Objectivist position.

Not really my intention. The post was more of a rumination, inspired by an Objectivist position.

Truth is the grasp of a fact, not of the relationship between a proposition in reality (I have no idea what a “mental concept” refers to…what other kind of concept is there?).

If you look at an earlier thread, Rationality and Objectivity, you will see that what we are now going over was made apparent to me. Incidentally, “mental concept” was intended to emphasize that we are talking about an act of consciousness and not some free-floating proposition that can be divorced from the self-concious activity of a subject.

I also said in that thread that most of what Objectivism is trying to accomplish with its definition of truth is accomplished by a common definition of “knowledge”–justified true belief.

Stephen Speicher replied that the use of “true” in this definition was redundant, but as you can see by the course this thread has taken, I am still not sure. However, I want to hold off debating it more until I go through ITOE with a fine tooth comb, probably next week.

This is important because unlike some correspondence theories, Objectivism does not endorse the idea that we throw out a bunch of propositions and then engage in a fevered search for the relationship between those propositions and reality, which supposedly exists apart from our knowledge

Well, I don’t think any good correspondence theory “endorses” quite what you are implying. There are degrees between rational justification and arbitrary stipulation. However, I do agree that we are hedging around the edges of an essential difference between Objectivism and other robust philosophies.

My suspicion is still vague, but I think much of the difference comes down to the way Objectivists use “context.”

“Context”–as a master concept–does a lot work in Objectivist epistemology, in my opinion too much. The reductio of it would seem to be that no one who has ever had an erroneous belief could ever be held responsible for making a mistaken claim to certainty. The person could always say, with a degree of honesty, “I was not unjustified in claiming certainty, for I was simply speaking from within my context of knowledge.” At some point, people must become responsible for the state of the context of knowledge they are working from. Likewise, while no strict Analytic-Synthetic distinction exists, there does exist a continuum in the degrees of certainty we can claim about something–i.e., some parts of our context of knowledge are more unassailable than others.

12

Stephen Speicher writes:

First, I think you would be hard-pressed to find the exact words you used in any of Ayn Rand’s writings.

That’s correct, although I’m sure I’ve heard/read her use the word “grasp.” I shouldn’t have put that definition in quotes, however. Thanks, Stephen, for keeping me honest! :dough:

Second, I was responding not to the positive characterization of truth which you wrote, but to your negating  remark about “relationship.”. You wrote

“Truth is the grasp of a fact, not of the relationship between a proposition in reality …”

The quote I provided by Ayn Rand was meant to counter your negation of “relationship.” Miss Rand’s quote was not meant as a formal definition. I selected only a portion from an extended discussion, one which spoke of “relationship.” I also could have quoted the following from OPAR (page 65):

“The concept of ‘truth’ identifies a type of relationship between a proposition and the facts of reality.”

I think the recognition of “relationship” to be quite important because the very notion of the “objective” means a relationship, one between your mind and reality.

“The objective approach involves a relationship between existence and consciousness.” OPAR, page 244.

Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t mean to imply there wasn’t or didn’t need to be a relationship. What I was stressing was that a relationship between a proposition and reality without an individual’s grasp of that relationship is not, according to Objectivism, truth. Truth, as you point out, is the product, not of the relationship between an idea and reality, but of identification of reality. The idea one derives from that identification thereafter stands in a positive relationship to reality.

What I wanted to stress by attacking the “relationship” formulation was the Objectivist method, which doesn’t consist of seeking out the relationship between arbitrary propositions and reality, but the identification of facts. In fact, the only case where a proposition can be held apart from a grasp of its truth is in complex cases where knowledge grows in stages, from possible on through certain (assuming it isn’t refuted of course).

13

Reason’s Ember writes:

If you look at an earlier thread, Rationality and Objectivity, you will see that what we are now going over was made apparent to me. 

Okay, I didn’t realize that.

I also said in that thread that most of what Objectivism is trying to accomplish with its definition of truth is accomplished by a common definition of “knowledge”–justified true belief. 

Stephen Speicher replied that the use of “true” in this definition was redundant, but as you can see by the course this thread has taken, I am still not sure.  However, I want to hold off debating it more until I go through ITOE with a fine tooth comb, probably next week.

The problem with these definitions is that most of the time they are stipulated and then philosophers ask, how do we live up to them? That’s why they eschew certainty - they define it in terms of omniscience and then whine (delight, actually) because man can’t achieve it. Epistemological concepts, to be valid, must be based on the identity of man’s consciousness. That’s why Objectivists use concepts like “truth” and “certainty” the way we do.

“Context”–as a master concept–does a lot work in Objectivist epistemology, in my opinion too much.

“Context” is just a recognition of the fact that man’s consciousness is limited - just as everything is limited. That’s a fact, and as with all facts, a proper epistemology must take that into account. No other philosophy, to my knowledge, does so.

The reductio of it would seem to be that no one who has ever had an erroneous belief could ever be held responsible for making a mistaken claim to certainty. The person could always say, with a degree of honesty, “I was not unjustified in claiming certainty, for I was simply speaking from within my context of knowledge.” At some point, people must become responsible for the state of the context of knowledge they are working from.

Of course they are. It is not okay to evade relevant knowledge and draw conclusions on the premise that such conclusions are valid given your context of knowledge. Part of your context is the knowledge that you don’t know everything you need to know in this particular case to draw a certain conclusion. Furthermore, since later knowledge is not a threat, but a value, there is no reason not to seek to constantly expand your context of knowledge. On the contrary, your life requires that.

But none of this justifies the demand that a man jump outside the context of his knowledge and attain omniscience in order to achieve certainty. Omniscience isn’t the ideal - there is no such thing! The law of identity doesn’t permit it. Context is GOOD because it is the only way knowledge can be achieved given (any) consciousness’s inherent limits.

Likewise, while no strict Analytic-Synthetic distinction exists, there does exist a continuum in the degrees of certainty we can claim about something–i.e., some parts of our context of knowledge are more unassailable than others.

Certainly not! There is a confusion here. Of course, some facts are further from the self-evident (the evidence of the senses), and in complex cases it is not enough to divide things into the two basic epistemological categories: “know it” and “don’t know it.”

In complex cases, our growth of knowledge proceeds through stages, from possible, to probable, to (when we hit the jackpot) certain. But once something is, properly speaking, certain it is unassailable. There are no degrees of certainty. You’re either certain or you’re not.

That’s not to say certainty grants us omniscience. Remember, we don’t have that because reality doesn’t permit it. We are fallible by nature, and that’s why we need a contextual, logical, objective method of cognition. That’s what Objectivism gives us.

14

I don’t think true, justified belief is properly a definition of the concept knowledge - ie, I don’t think that is essentially what knowledge is. It connotes a sort of arbitrary reconciliation between an arbitrary contextless floating abstraction and an arbitrary contextless unconceptualized concrete. That kind of definition does not imply in the least that the belief arises from its justification, nor that a justified belief cannot be other than true, nor that beliefs, justifications, and truths are all contextual. As such, it’s hopeless qua definition.

Knowledge as the identification of or the conceptual grasp of or the unit-perspective of a fact of reality fits the bill much more nicely.

15

I can’t recall where I heard this point, but I think it’s right. “Justified true belief” can’t be a proper definition for knowledge, because it makes knowledge a species of belief. In other words, it implies that belief is the broader concept, and knowledge is a specification of it. But the primary contrast to knowledge is ignorance, not false belief, so that can’t be at all the right genus.

16

DPW,

Thanks for the reply, and I will get back to you.

As for the other responses, I think there is still a bit of confusion.

It connotes a sort of arbitrary reconciliation between an arbitrary contextless floating abstraction and an arbitrary contextless unconceptualized concrete. That kind of definition does not imply in the least that the belief arises from its justification, nor that a justified belief cannot be other than true, nor that beliefs, justifications, and truths are all contextual. As such, it’s hopeless qua definition.

How can it connote that when “justified” is part of the definition? You

are making it connote that because it’s what your definition of knowledge is chiefly set out to work against.

Now, if you’re saying that the definition can’t stand alone as a guarantee of correctness for the concept of knowledge without seeing it “in action,” then, yes, that’s true, but that’s also true of any definition, Objectivist definitions included. It’s part and parcel with the fact that a word is an arbitrary sign and the concept behind it can shift as the system of meanings in a language shifts as new knowledge, new applications, and new sentiments get built into it. That’s why we can say to others with a different vocabulary “that’s not what I meant” and really mean it. It’s also why we can occasionally have a thought desperately trying to find an intelligible expression in language, but also fail to find that expression right away (it’s the old “Michael Angelo with no hands” problem).

In other words, it implies that belief is the broader concept, and knowledge is a specification of it. But the primary contrast to knowledge is ignorance, not false belief, so that can’t be at all the right genus

You are implying a strictly vertical or quantified system of classification, Chinese Box style. Complex definitions–those with more than two basic components–have to be dealt with in a different way.

If you say, “man is a rational animal,” then it is technically true that animal is a broader concept than man, one that subsumes man**.(a)**

However, “knowledge” does not just deal with two components such as “belief + justification” or “belief + correspondence to fact”–it deals with three, “belief + rational justification + correspondence to fact”.

(a) Even this simple division work won’t work because the “rational” component does so much more to establish the concept of man than other subdivisions of animal, such as “two-legged” or “land-based.” What is important is essence, as you yourself point out when you say “primary contrast”, and essence is more than a sum of parts. “Ignorance” is similarly a complex concept. There are different ways of being ignorant, with different conditions of necessity and sufficiency.

17

Ember,

I’ve read that a couple of times and I’m not entirely sure what you mean. I’d speculate, but I don’t want to spend time writing a response and have it turn out that I missed the mark. Can you rephrase your objection, preferably giving examples of what you mean?

18

Matt,

Well, part of the confusion might be the way I am interpretting you.

I think what you are trying to say is that you don’t like the definition of knowledge as “justified true belief” because it implies that “belief” is the broader category and knowledge is a specification of it.

This implies a certain categorization:

(1)

We have all these beliefs

some of them are true / some of them aren’t

and knowledge is the left side of this subcategory.

Similarly, we could say:

(2)

There are animals

some of them are rational / some of them aren’t

and men are the left side of this subcategory.

However, (1) does not work for knowledge, because the real way of breaking it down is:

There are beliefs

some are true / some are false / some are justified / some are unjustified.

There is no “primary contrast” to knowledge, if what you mean is that their one simple contrast within the subcategoryof “belief” that establishes it.

It is necessary that the belief be “true,” and it is necessary that the belief be “justified,” but it is not sufficient for the belief to be “knowledge” that it be EITHER “true” OR “justified” without it being the other as well. It needs to be BOTH.

Is that a little clearer?

**Forget about what I put in the footnote. It is not strictly relevant to this discussion.

19

Oh, ok. Well, I’ve certainly taken enough epistemology classes to understand that – I thought you were trying to get at something more complicated.

Are you familiar with the Objectivist theory of concept-formation? If not, I can’t take the time to explain it to you, so I’d suggest reading up on it – and if you’re interested at all in Objectivism, you should do so anyway, because it’s really the most revolutionary part of Rand’s thinking.

Anyway, one important part of concept-formation is differentiation. In fact, it’s really THE fundamental. I could not, for example, form the concept “table” without having observed things that are commensurable but different: chairs, etc. Those entities I am differentiating a sort of thing from in forming a concept of it have to be commensurable, which means that they must all belong to some larger category (which I need not have yet conceptualized.) The definition of a term arises from this process: the wider category gives rise to the genus, and the differentiating properties become the differentia.

So with regard to knowledge, the question is what sorts of things one differentiates it from in the process of forming the concept. I was arguing (indirectly) that one doesn’t form the concept “knowledge” by differentiating it from various sorts of beliefs; rather, one forms the concept by differentiating it from ignorance. If that’s right, than “a mental grasp of a fact of reality” (or something like it) is entirely appropriate as a definition.

20

MinorityOfOne,

I don’t think “ignorance” and “knowledge” are differentiable by a commensurable characteristic. “Ignorance” is a negative concept–like “nothing”, “nobody” and “nonexistence”. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge*, in the same way that “nothing” is the absence of “something” and “nobody” is the absence of “somebody”.

I think Ayn Rand wrote in ITOE that negative concepts are only relative concepts–they refer to the absence of an entity, not to a different entity. Knowledge is not differentiable from ignorance in the same way that existence is not differentiable from non-existence.

*by knowledge, I don’t mean a set of ideas, theories, concepts, and so on, but a specific mental state with respect to a given fact of reality.