My post # 38 should have read:
" “world to word” vs “word to world” fit 39:00
1 and 2 are united by a word or symbol. A word by Rand’s view is not 1, 2, and 3 united by a word or symbol because no word exists until 1 and 2 are unified. The word is the unifier. Rand clearly stated that her view is that words represent concepts. If you have no word, you have no representation.
See ITOE, The Role of Words — Words and Concepts, pg. 162-177. On the one hand, she asserts that a [CONCEPT] is *NOT* the mere union of only 1 & 2. Thus, it is nonsense, if we take her original position seriously, that a word represents the [[CONCEPT]-1 & 2] when it is not possible for 1 & 2 to be a concept in the first place. A [CONCEPT], according to her definition, entails the presence of a word; thus, why would I need a word for a word?
rowsdower “You could only think I imply the latter by assuming that words are concepts.”
In a sense you are right. Words are not concepts, they are audio-visual symbols which designate concepts. Without concepts words are simply sounds. If your words don’t designate concepts, you will speak like Mad Hatter ": 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe." - Is that what you mean by language?
Words are means to retain concepts, but concepts themselves initially are pre-verbal.One doesn’t need a word to notice similarity or common denominator between 2 or more units, but needs a word to retain it.
See ITOE, The Role of Words — Words and Concepts, pg. 162-177. On the one hand, she asserts that a [CONCEPT] is *NOT* the mere union of only 1 & 2. Thus, it is nonsense, if we take her original position seriously, that a word represents the [[CONCEPT]-1 & 2] when it is not possible for 1 & 2 to be a concept in the first place.
So it’s fair to say word(1 + 2 + otherStuff) = concept. You’re saying Rand said word(1 + 2 + word) = concept. By represent a concept, I simply mean that once a concept is made, you use the word to denote the concept. Of course, having a word means you have a concept. The word is the last step. Your line of argument presumes that some words are not concepts.
Consider the sentence:
You are likely to be eat en by a grue.
“You” is a deixis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/deixis) and isn’t quite a proper name or a concept (okay, this one is nitpicking and You can consider it a proper name if You want to.)
By this logic, no pronoun is a concept. As I read it, a pronoun is: “any of a small set of words in a language that are used as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases and whose referents are named or understood in the context”. To me, this means that pronouns are second-order concepts with referents contextually defined. “You” means the one or ones referred to. Within the context of a conversation, this set of referents must be defined. It not, then the one listening to such a concept would be confused and require clarification in order to make sense of this word. When taken out of context, “you” is a concepts that refers to an unknown collection of referents. Pronouns require a context. Without that context they are like functions without an argument.
So it’s fair to say word(1 + 2 + otherStuff) = concept. You’re saying Rand said word(1 + 2 + word) = concept. By represent a concept, I simply mean that once a concept is made, you use the word to denote the concept. Of course, having a word means you have a concept. The word is the last step. Your line of argument presumes that some words are not concepts.
I don’t know of any place where Rand identified “otherStuff” as a constituent part of a concept, I also have no idea what that means or how it relates to Rand’s presentation of Objectivist epistemology.
In short, Rand says (1 + 2 + word) = concept and/or concept = (1 + 2 + word), as well as (1 + word) = concept and/or concept = (1 + word). She then goes on to say, that a word denotes (1 + 2 + word)/(1 + word)/[concept].
I am not sure how my “line of argument presumes that some words are not concepts.”
At any rate, perhaps I may have misstated my position earlier, but it is definitely true that some mentally apprehended words themselves (i.e. — mental concretes, not perceptual concretes) are not concepts.
For example, any mentally apprehended word itself might not be a concept, in the sense that I might know a word without knowing how it is related to and/or united with [1 — a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction] and/or [2 — a specific definition]. In this case, I merely know the word, but not its meaning. Thus, that word would not be a concept for me. This is easy enough to prove - there are probably hundreds of words in the dictionary whose meanings I don’t know. I could simply open a dictionary to a random page, cover all the definitions with a piece of paper, and, more than likely, find a word that I have never heard of and whose meaning I could only guess at. By reading the word, I would know the word itself, but not its meaning (i.e. — 1 & 2). In this case, that word would not be a concept, nor would it denote a concept, even though I could potentially remember that word and how to spell it, etc. for some time following that event.
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I don’t deny that Rand says that a word denotes a concept. She definitely says that. My problem is that this sentiment creates a bizarre redundancy when contrasted with her statements about what constitutes a [CONCEPT].
Let’s take a look at the fact that Rand says that [CONCEPT] = (1 + 2 + word), as well as [CONCEPT] = (1 + word)
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Prof. D : So until the word was interposed, there would not in the strict sense be a concept?
AR : Right.
(ITOE, p. 165)
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Prof. D : Then would this do as the statement of the process? One integrates, then introduces a sensuous concrete holding the integration. At that point the sound or the sensuous concrete becomes a word whose meaning is the objects integrated.
AR : That’s right.
Prof. D : And at the same time one has for the first time a concept.
AR : That’s right.
(ITOE, Rand, p. 166)
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Prof. D : I’ve described the process, but I have arrived also at a product which is: these regarded as units. Now at that point do I have the concept of “pad,” or do I still have something further to do, a further integration to make, before the product would be a concept?
AR : Yes. You have to give it a name.
Prof. D : Oh, give it a name— not “united by a specific definition”?
AR : A definition would be involved in more complex subjects, but on the first level, you don’t have to have a definition.
(ITOE, Rand, p. 167-168)
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AR :…it’s precisely by learning to differentiate, which I believe takes quite a period of time— that a child becomes ready to form the concept fully, which happens when he finds a word for it.
(Rand, p. 169).
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Prof. D : There wasn’t even one in the room, and he was crying for it. And so one would have to say that even without a name these are being treated in an open-ended way rather than a purely perceptual way?
AR : Only to this extent: what you are describing is exactly the preconceptual stage. That is the mind in process. At the end of that process, he will be ready to grasp that a word names these objects.
(ITOE, Rand, p. 169).
_______
But in order for [perceptual information on its way to becoming conceptualized or brought into conceptual order] to become a concept, the infant has to acquire some method of identifying the total of these objects conceptually. That’s the purpose that a word serves.
(ITOE, Rand, p. 169).
________
AR : Therefore, if your question is: at what point does this preliminary mental activity become a full-fledged concept? I say it becomes that when the child learns that a perceptual symbol— remember that a sound or the visual shape of a word is a percept— when he learns that that percept stands for all those concretes that he’s trying to integrate.
(ITOE, Rand, p. 170)
I don’t know of any place where Rand identified “otherStuff” as a constituent part of a concept, I also have no idea what that means or how it relates to Rand’s presentation of Objectivist epistemology.
In short, Rand says (1 + 2 + word) = concept and/or concept = (1 + 2 + word), as well as (1 + word) = concept and/or concept = (1 + word). She then goes on to say, that a word denotes (1 + 2 + word)/(1 + word)/[concept].
All those quotes show how the word is a unifier. A word in this case works like a function. There is only redundancy if a word is a separate thing to be unified and not the thing unifies. In a way, denoting a concept is just a matter of naming the unifier, the word. If a word is not doing the unifying, what do you suggest as an alternative?
“otherStuff” conveys the nonessentials of concept formation.
By this logic, no pronoun is a concept. As I read it, a pronoun is: “any of a small set of words in a language that are used as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases and whose referents are named or understood in the context”. To me, this means that pronouns are second-order concepts with referents contextually defined. “You” means the one or ones referred to. Within the context of a conversation, this set of referents must be defined. It not, then the one listening to such a concept would be confused and require clarification in order to make sense of this word. When taken out of context, “you” is a concepts that refers to an unknown collection of referents. Pronouns require a context. Without that context they are like functions without an argument.
Consider “A rock is heavy. It is mossy.” We use ‘it’ to make sure that our two concepts heavy and mossy refer to the same entity. You couldn’t use a concept like “rolling” there because “rolling is mossy” wouldn’t clearly refer to the heavy rock. It’s not even as simple as a substitute for a phrase, because “A rock is mossy” still wouldn’t perform the task of referring to the same rock.
the word is a unifier.
I agree that every time I have a concept, it would be great to have a word that denotes it in a direct manner. Now, is it true that every single time I read a word, that contributes to meaning, I certainly directly refer to a concept? Is this the role performed by words or a role?
Consider the language of logic. Every time I have a boolean I give it a name. Every time I have an operator I give it a name. Now prove that every symbol is one of these. You can’t, and A | (B & C) and (A | B ) & C have the same parts but different meanings. In the same way that “roses are red, violets are blue” does not mean “roses are blue, violets are red”. Language linearizes something that isn’t necessarily linear, and in the process may accumulate meta-data about the structure you want to convey.
Consider the language of logic. Every time I have a boolean I give it a name. Every time I have an operator I give it a name. Now prove that every symbol is one of these. You can’t, and A | (B & C) and (A | B ) & C have the same parts but different meanings. In the same way that “roses are red, violets are blue” does not mean “roses are blue, violets are red”. Language linearizes something that isn’t necessarily linear, and in the process may accumulate meta-data about the structure you want to convey.
I don’t follow the analogy. Yeah, the meaning of those two boolean phrases are different despite having the same symbols. Not sure what you want to demonstrate. Rand’s idea that we’re discussing says that all words denote concepts. Rand didn’t preclude other roles of words, but she certainly said that a role all words share is denoting a concept.
So you’re sure that the ‘(’ in (B & C) doesn’t denote the concept of “occasionally logicians want to apply operations in a different order”? You understand that we are simply doing it, not talking about it?
Consider “A rock is heavy. It is mossy.” We use ‘it’ to make sure that our two concepts heavy and mossy refer to the same entity. You couldn’t use a concept like “rolling” there because “rolling is mossy” wouldn’t clearly refer to the heavy rock. It’s not even as simple as a substitute for a phrase, because “A rock is mossy” still wouldn’t perform the task of referring to the same rock.
Pronouns, by their definitions, must refer to a collection of referents. A pronoun disconnected from referents is an error. The pronoun itself is not the collection of referents but stands in place of them as a convenience. In your example, we could replace the second sentence by “That same rock is mossy” and this would make sure that the two concepts apply to the same entity.
Pronouns, in this sense, represent referents and stand in their place. Disconnected from a collection of referents, they represent errors. Whether pronouns connected to a collection of referents represent concepts, I’ll let “you” decide. All concepts are contextual. What is interesting about pronouns is that they may represent different concepts in different contexts.
So you’re sure that the ‘(’ in (B & C) doesn’t denote the concept of “occasionally logicians want to apply operations in a different order”? You understand that we are simply doing it, not talking about it?
Simply doing what? ‘(’ would be a concept of a method, so of course you are *doing* something. You seem to be equating concepts with definitions. If concepts were just a definition, you’d be right, since talking about X doesn’t cover the performance of X. But Rand explained that her theory of concepts doesn’t say concepts or even words are their definition and nothing more. In what way do you think Rand fails to take into account “doings”?
You’ve got two options.
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The sentence is _about _at least one of A or B & C being true, and the order of operations is involved in expressing this but is not part of the meaning.
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The sentence is about the order of its operations.
Pick 2, and ‘(’ is used as a concept. But then you contradict the formal definition of the language. Pick 1 and ‘(’ goes away during parsing; it only existed to structure the rest.
Pick 2, and ‘(’ is used as a concept. But then you contradict the formal definition of the language. Pick 1 and ‘(’ goes away during parsing; it only existed to structure the rest.
So what if its primary purpose is structure? That says nothing about if ‘(’ is a concept or not. I didn’t see any argument that concepts cannot refer to things that structure a sentence or a phrase. Or even the assertion!
So which one do you pick?
1 is fine. 2 is wrong for a number of reasons.
I have to be very careful with this. The goal of the logic language is to apply boolean operators to variables, aka concepts to referents. You recognize some distinction, in this simplified language, of the difference between a referent to which concepts are applied, the concepts themselves, and the syntax of expressing the application of concepts to referents. You recognize the meaning of the sentence to be something distinct from the list of symbols used to express it. You recognize that the idea conveyed is separate from your idea of the method of conveying it. Is this all correct?
You recognize that the idea conveyed is separate from your idea of the method of conveying it. Is this all correct?
Yeah. “Idea conveyed” and “idea of the method of conveying it” can both be concepts. Or at least, you didn’t say how the latter can’t be a concept.
Specifically, dower didn’t convey how concepts of method aren’t concepts…
Ayn Rand made it clear that she doesn’t literally consider the words concepts. They’re symbols stand for concepts.
“Words are concepts” is a straw-man position. Rand also corrected herself about saying a concept is its referents. Try using more specific terms such as “represents” or “is described by”.