Rand defines knowledge as “a mental grasp of a fact of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation.”
Know, before I attack Rand’s theory of knowledge, I would first like to say that I was an adamant objectivist for a year and have since realized that she falls short in a couple of epistemological areas. Her ethics are incredibly complete, but her metaphysics and epistemology lack. She was a fiction writer first, so I do not discredit her philosophically because I believe she has superb arguments advocating mans rights and egoism.
My argument’s will follow similar lines of what John Searle and Jackson have argued before. Jackson is credited for “Mary the super color scientist” and Searle is just a great philosopher. I will start out in talking about pain and George Washington. Imagine that I meet an alien that is can understand the speakers native language. This alien has no real knowledge of our world besides being able to learn our language. Know, I can teach this alien who the first president of the United States was. Later, when someone asks the alien who the first prsident of the United STates was, he would say George Washington, and that would be a completely satisfactory answer. Next I teach the alien what a pain is. I tell him that a pain is a discomfort in which the nocioreceptors are agitated and send a signala to a dendrite and up the axon through the thalamus and into the cerebellum and cerebral cortex for processing. So not, he knows what a pain is right? Well, not exactly. He still lacks full information concerning pains because he lacks the qualitative state that is unique to pain. This qualitative and unique state that he feels is not subject to vocalization or to comparison to others qualitative state of pain. It is here then that we confront the problem of absolutes and the inability to aubilize the contents of our concioussness. Since part of the definition of pain must be left out, it is unable to be considered an absolute, concrete definition.
Right now I have to go to a lecture on campus, but I look forward to hearing from you all. One other caveat, I will not respond if you are unable to carry on a friendly, intellectual conversation.
…before I attack Rand’s theory of knowledge… … One other caveat, I will not respond if you are unable to carry on a friendly, intellectual conversation.
I assume the alien has some senses (plus something like a “brain”). Without that, it’d be quite an effort for her to reach the understanding of George Washington being the first President of the U.S.A.
For now, we’ll assume that the alien does not feel pain.
How would you summarize the “lesson” from your example. Would it be: an alien without a particular sense (say sight) might have enough other senses to to enable her to understand reality, but she will never understand that missing sense (i.e. sight) the way a seeing person would.
Is that an accurate summary of your position? If not, what would be an accurate – yet essential – summary.
Jaco213 wrote: “Since part of the definition of pain must be left out, it is unable to be considered an absolute, concrete definition.”
What part is left out? By what standard should the definition of a thing actually be the thing? Is the dictionary definition of “bicycle” incorrect, because I can’t ride down the street on the definition?
The purpose of a definition is to denote a thing, not be the thing.
In the year that you’ve been an “adament objectivist” (sic) (what a length of time to have absorbed volumes of material and to have integrated it completely!), you failed to pick up a crucial part of Ayn Rand’s theory of knowledge: knowledge is contextual to the known and to the knower, and therefore objective. Your example with you meeting an alien assumes that knowledge is acontextual or omnicontextual, and therefore intrinsic.
Error: If metaphysics and epistemology are “lacking”, then it follows that ethics must be also – since ethics is built hierarchically on metaphysics and epistemology. You can’t possibly have perfect ethics if the foundation of those ethics is flawed.
Error: If you did not understand the above, then you could not have possibly ever been an Objectivist in any sense of the word. It is a fundamental part of grasping the philosophy.
Error: There is no such thing as “learning” a language without understanding the concepts represented by the words. Without the conceptual grasp, the words are just a jumble of symbols with no meaning.
Error: As soon as the alien set his own eyes on this world, he starts learning about it, and nothing could stop that in a being capable of traveling here in the first place.
Error: The definition of “pain” includes both the biomechanical process which causes it and the qualitative effect.
Error: Such aliens do not exist in the universe, and to suppose that they might has nothing to do with philosophy. Philosophy deals with life and the universe at it is, not fantasy worlds that never exist. We don’t care what might happen in such places because we live in this universe.
Philosophy is not concerned with the epistemology of fictional space aliens. It is only concerned with the espitemology of man.
While running my dog I realized I made an error myself in my last post here.
The definition of pain does not include the biomechanical process which causes it. “Pain” is simply “a physiological response to stimuli that informs the individual of incorrect action”. There is no need to grasp the biomechanical process in order to grasp “pain” – certainly everyone (except for a few genetic defects) before 20th century medicine grasped the concept, but had not means to gain the requisite knowledge for understanding it causes.
Assuming that the alien actually could exist, just for illustrative purposes, and he could not actually feel pain because he has no equivalent biomechanical mechanism – he would still be able to grasp the concept of pain. He would be able to know what pain is – he would not be able to know what pain feels like.
Just as many young Objectivists know the definition of romantic love, they can grasp its component cognitive elements and perform the abstraction. Until they actually live life as an adult, however, and meet someone who shares their values and reflects their character, they will not know what it feels like.
The ‘problem’ jaco tries to accuse Oism of is that you cannot define something like pain by abstractions. However, this ‘problem’ exists for everything else too - describe to your alien what green is - “photons of light, some of which are absorbed by material and others which are reflected into your eye at a wavelength X”, and the same ‘problem’ exists that your definition will be incomplete.
Jaco assumes that all of knowledge can be defined without tracing it down to concretes - that you can define pain without having a perceptual memory of pain for the other person to refer to, that you can define color without pointing to an outside object as exhibiting that color, etc. In other words, “jaco” is a full blown rationalist, to whom sensory evidence and perceptual concretes are irrelevant. But the fact is quite the opposite from his assumptions, and that nothing can be defined without concretes, NOTHING. What does the definition of “man” come down to? That thing over there (pointing). So it’s not a problem in Objectivist theory of knowledge, it is a problem in jaco’s pretty weak attempts to discredit things he doesn’t know much about (but makes big claims for).
Error: The definition of “pain” includes both the biomechanical process which causes it and the qualitative effect.
You already mentioned this error, Tom, but I just wanted to further clarify a bit; the definition of pain doesn’t necessarily include either of these things; these are referents of the term “pain”. A definition is simply a brief phrase giving the most essential characterstics of a term; the genus to which it belongs (sensations, I’m thinking, or possibly negative sensations if more specificity is required) and what differentiates it from all other sensations belonging to that genus.
What distinguishes pain from, say, stress? Confusion?
Pain is generally only defined ostensively; it is an extremely basic concept for a human being. If I want to define it for you, I pinch you on the arm and say, “that right there is pain.”
As mentioned in ITOE, a definition presupposes ALL the characteristics of what is being defined but does not INCLUDE them. Thus defining man as a “rational animal” is perfectly sufficient; it gives a genus for man (animal) and the most important differentiating characteristic (rational), and is perfectly sufficient to place the concept “man” within the framework of the hierarchy of your knowledge.
If I were to define “pain” to an alien that feels no such thing, I would simply say that it is a negative sensation (perhaps having to define “sensation” first) that inspires the desire to avoid a repitition of that experience. References to biomechanical processes, etc, would be pointless; the alien would know all it would need to know to address the idea of pain in dealing with other humans.
