"A body has weight"
Malrassic Park
under certain conditions. The synthesis of the subject, 'body', with
the predicate, 'has weight', must include conditions external to the
subject. This is not how the knowledge is validated, as when Peikoff
wrote, "Such truths cannot be validated merely by correctly applying
the laws of logic." (TheAnalytic-Synthetic Dichotomy) Rather, to use
Kant's own words, it is like this:
"Analytic judgments (affirmative) are therefore those in which the
connection of the predicate with the subject is thought through
identity; those in which this connection is thought without identity
should be entitled synthetic." (A6-7) That is,
Of course some of you will jump on the "without identity," but that
only means "without recourse merely to the identity of the subject" as
with analytic propositions. So when you say that the proposition "A
body has weight" states something about the body's identity, you imply
the precluding conditions which support the predicate, for instance,
the proximity of a massive body such as the earth with its relatively
powerful gravitational field.
It would be clearer, therefore, to state that some propositions are
conditional, and some are unconditional. The proposition "A body is
extended" is unconditional, because there cannot be a body that is not
extended. The proposition "A body has weight" is conditional upon the
presence of factors external to the subject.
Now let's take a look at the examples Peikoff used in his article.
i) A man is a rational animal.
ii) A man has only two eyes.
To isolate the "problem" here Peikoff invented the example of men with
a baker's dozen eyes in the back of their heads, which is merely
"argument by ridicule." In fact, it is obviously possible for a man to
have less than two eyes and *still be a rational animal.* Nothing
about eyes affects the identity, the analyticity, or the
unconditionality of the metaphysical definition of "man," because the
presence or absence of eyes is not included in this identity. Thus,
(ii) is synthetic, not *validated* synthetically, only *connected*
synthetically in the creation of the proposition.
i) Ice is a solid.
ii) Ice floats on water.
Peikoff isolated the "problem" with (ii) by observing that "such
truths cannot be validated merely by correctly applying the laws of
logic." But as Kant said at A6-7, this has nothing to do with
validating the proposition, only with connecting subject and object in
propositional form. So "Ice" is connected with "floats on water"
synthetically, that is, by the presence of water *external* to the ice
which is not included in any definition of "ice," nor is that
particular body of water within which it floats part of its identity.
i) 2 plus 2 equals 4.
ii) 2 qts. of water mixed with 2 qts. of ethyl alcohol yield 3.86 qts.
of liquid, at 15.56°C.
Analyzing this one has yielded some interesting results here in the
past, regarding whether or not (ii) is analytic a priori. At any rate,
Peikoff, for purposes of argument, regarded (ii) as synthetic but only
to allow him to knock down the tradition supporting it. However, we
must connect the subject with the object through experience, therefore
the proposition has to be synthetic because of the conditionedness of
the experiment. Proposition (i), by the same token, requires
connectedness in experience according to Kant (it implies 2 somethings
are being added to 2 other somethings), so it is also synthetic.
I'll agree with Peikoff that there is a certain 20th-century tradition
which believed that (i), and perhaps even (ii), is analytic, but a)
Kant was not part of that tradition nor did he originate it, b) Kant,
as Peikoff said, only gave these terms their present names, and c)
Kant indeed provided the answer for resolving the 20th-century
analytic-synthetic dichotomy.
--
" If I had remembered that the name 'Galt' appears
in one of her books, I would have chosen a different
name for my character."
Stephen R. Donaldson, "Gradual Interview"
Chris Cathcart
"Ice floats on water" states a fact about ice, which pertains just as
much to the nature of the subject (ice) as does the statement "ice is
a solid." Formulate a proper definition of ice . . . and that
definition pertains just as much to the nature of ice as these
others. That's the reason Peikoff rejects a dichotomy between the
"kinds" of statements. If "analytical" statements merely repeat or
draw out what is in the definition, then there's no harm done, but
it's hardly ever anywhere close to that benign when boneheaded
philosophers get in on this topic. Definitions only state some
generic and distinguishing features about a subject, such that we have
a short-hand way of referring to one set of objects to the exclusion
of others. The boneheads turn this into something else -- that
somehow since through the act of definition we've set apart the group
of objects we call cows from all other objects by stating a specific
feature about cows, that we haven't implicitly set cows apart from
other objects in other ways. So we get these boneheaded conclusions
that we need some other "kind" of statement to capture these other
ways that cows are set apart, only now this other "kind" of statement
doesn't pack the same kind of punch as the definitional one. It's
silly stuff. Think of the context you have to drop, the illicit
assumptions you have to make. Hume was a master at it.
Rand and Peikoff do something Hume only pretends to do . . . and that
is to actually truly start with the concrete and the perceptual.
Hume, alleged arch-empiricist, starts with words that he never
bothered to trace the meanings of, and plays his clever games from
there. Total arch-rationalist in actuality -- rationalist in form of
argument, empiricist in the content. By deductive necessity, he ends
up a disintegrated mess. It's cute how scholars of the history of
philosophy miss that point.
Now. Rand and Peikoff say that "cows are incapable of unaided flight"
states a necessary truth about cows, i.e., that it states a fact
pertaining to the nature of cows. Now. How is it that they managed
to come up with that conclusion? What was the process by which they
traced that statement back to something fundamental and
incontrovertible? Like actual good philosophers, they actually give a
shit about where such statements come from. They don't start with
floating and deducing. They begin by establishing the context for the
"problem" to be addressed, which invariably involved reducing their
discussion to the perceptually given. "However did we form a proper
concept of cows to begin with" becomes a question of fundamental
importance. In more general terms, the question is, "What are the
facts of reality that give rise to any of my statements?" Most of the
history of philosophy consists of bumbling failures by the implicit
standard here.
"A man has only two eyes?" Well, understood in a certain way, this is
a statement of fact about the nature of men. And what certain way is
that? The maker of the statement need only specify that it's
referring to the *normal example* of the subject subsumed under the
statement. Genetic anomalies and other kinds of accidents and mishaps
occur. And so what? Only under an assumption of "natural kinds" or
some other illicit assumption that philosophers have been prone to
make, is there some kind of problem.
You write:
> have less than two eyes and *still be a rational animal.* Nothing
> about eyes affects the identity, the analyticity, or the
> unconditionality of the metaphysical definition of "man," because the
> presence or absence of eyes is not included in this identity.
I don't know what a "metaphysical definition" is supposed to be, nor
is it at all clear how "identity" comes into play when we're
discussing something other than a singular instance of a thing with
all its characteristics. Implicit in the *concept* of a rational
animal (and yes, being a mental existent, a concept has identity), in
our *actual* understanding and not some hypothetical ivory-tower
understanding of the concept "man," is something more fleshed-out:
that we're talking about a being subsumed under the narrower
classification "mammal," and that the *normal* instance subsumed under
the classification is that the being has two eyes. There's not any
mystery about this, there's no problem to be solved, no tortured and
awkward explanations that have to be made to account for a statement
like "humans have two eyes."
With statements like what you just made above, it's evident that you
just haven't come to understand how to think about these issues
properly. Maybe it's time you gave some serious consideration to
finally doing so.
Malrassic Park
I should add as a footnote that Peikoff seems to have been addressing
A.J. Ayers work "Language, Truth and Logic," and he did mention that
author and his work in his article. I have not however been able to
find the Ayers quote that Peikoff gave, and as usual Peikoff was quite
unhelpful in his scholarship.
>"Ice floats on water" states a fact about ice, which pertains just as
>much to the nature of the subject (ice) as does the statement "ice is
>a solid."
Of course these are all facts. But it is the *nature of the
proposition* that it is contingent on ice actually floating on water.
It is not necessary that the ice actually be floating on water *in
order to be ice.*
Peikoff uses the argument by ridicule in his counter-example of
imagining the chunk of floating ice suddenly plummeting to the bottom
of the water. That would also occur if you pushed or pulled it down to
the bottom, and without contradicting its nature or making up
ridiculous examples.
It is only necessary to imagine the ice in relationship to anything
apart from the fact that it is a solid form of water, and you have
grounds for forming synthetic statements with "ice" as the subject.
Furthermore, the two types of propositions perform different functions
for cognition. The analytic proposition is useful for adding clarity
to the known nature of the subject, while the synthetic proposition is
used for amplifying on what we already know about the subject in
itself. Thus, for example, it is not necessary to do experiments with
ice to know that it is a solid form of water, but it is necessary to
do experiments (usually during childhood) to learn that it floats on
water. It is then necessary (usually during adulthood) to learn why
ice floats on water - water is about 9% denser than ice. And this is
another fact that can only be garnered through experiment.
None of this does violation to Rand's law of identity.
> Formulate a proper definition of ice . . . and that
>definition pertains just as much to the nature of ice as these
>others. That's the reason Peikoff rejects a dichotomy between the
>"kinds" of statements. If "analytical" statements merely repeat or
>draw out what is in the definition, then there's no harm done, but
>it's hardly ever anywhere close to that benign when boneheaded
>philosophers get in on this topic. Definitions only state some
>generic and distinguishing features about a subject, such that we have
>a short-hand way of referring to one set of objects to the exclusion
>of others. The boneheads turn this into something else -- that
>somehow since through the act of definition we've set apart the group
>of objects we call cows from all other objects by stating a specific
>feature about cows, that we haven't implicitly set cows apart from
>other objects in other ways. So we get these boneheaded conclusions
>that we need some other "kind" of statement to capture these other
>ways that cows are set apart, only now this other "kind" of statement
>doesn't pack the same kind of punch as the definitional one. It's
>silly stuff. Think of the context you have to drop, the illicit
>assumptions you have to make. Hume was a master at it.
Kant, at least, did not say that one kind of statement "packs more
punch" than the other kind. I'm not sure exactly what you're talking
about there, or who believes such a thing.
>Rand and Peikoff do something Hume only pretends to do . . . and that
>is to actually truly start with the concrete and the perceptual.
>Hume, alleged arch-empiricist, starts with words that he never
>bothered to trace the meanings of, and plays his clever games from
>there. Total arch-rationalist in actuality -- rationalist in form of
>argument, empiricist in the content. By deductive necessity, he ends
>up a disintegrated mess. It's cute how scholars of the history of
>philosophy miss that point.
Hume didn't bother to trace down his meanings, and so Kant came along
and helped him out.
>Now. Rand and Peikoff say that "cows are incapable of unaided flight"
>states a necessary truth about cows, i.e., that it states a fact
>pertaining to the nature of cows. Now. How is it that they managed
>to come up with that conclusion? What was the process by which they
>traced that statement back to something fundamental and
>incontrovertible? Like actual good philosophers, they actually give a
>shit about where such statements come from. They don't start with
>floating and deducing. They begin by establishing the context for the
>"problem" to be addressed, which invariably involved reducing their
>discussion to the perceptually given. "However did we form a proper
>concept of cows to begin with" becomes a question of fundamental
>importance. In more general terms, the question is, "What are the
>facts of reality that give rise to any of my statements?" Most of the
>history of philosophy consists of bumbling failures by the implicit
>standard here.
You have to know what the history of philosophy consists of before you
can make that assertion into a judgment.
>"A man has only two eyes?" Well, understood in a certain way, this is
>a statement of fact about the nature of men. And what certain way is
>that? The maker of the statement need only specify that it's
>referring to the *normal example* of the subject subsumed under the
>statement. Genetic anomalies and other kinds of accidents and mishaps
>occur. And so what? Only under an assumption of "natural kinds" or
>some other illicit assumption that philosophers have been prone to
>make, is there some kind of problem.
I never said there was a problem. I just don't think Peikoff should be
attributing Ayers' thinking on the subject to Kant, when in fact it
was Ayers, not Kant, who wrote about validating propositions, where
Kant was concerned only with connecting the subject and object of
propositions.
>You write:
>
>> have less than two eyes and *still be a rational animal.* Nothing
>> about eyes affects the identity, the analyticity, or the
>> unconditionality of the metaphysical definition of "man," because the
>> presence or absence of eyes is not included in this identity.
>
>I don't know what a "metaphysical definition" is supposed to be,
It is supposed to be this: "In the Objectivist view, the proposition
that man is the rational animal does not mean that men always follow
reason; many do not. Nor does it mean merely that man alone possesses
the faculty of reason. It means that this faculty is a fundamental of
human nature, because man is the organism who survives by its use."
(OPAR, 195)
Is it fundamental to a man's nature that he have two eyes? Does it add
anything more than ridicule to the discussion to make up an example
such as having a baker's dozen eyes in the back of one's head? And
notice that Peikoff himself is making a distinction between having
reason and always following reason. The fact that men do not have to
follow reason is an amplification upon what we think apriori, that is,
metaphysically about man, that he is a rational being.
>is it at all clear how "identity" comes into play when we're
>discussing something other than a singular instance of a thing with
>all its characteristics.
You can talk about the plural instance of a thing and get the same
results.
>Implicit in the *concept* of a rational
>animal (and yes, being a mental existent, a concept has identity), in
>our *actual* understanding and not some hypothetical ivory-tower
>understanding of the concept "man," is something more fleshed-out:
>that we're talking about a being subsumed under the narrower
>classification "mammal," and that the *normal* instance subsumed under
>the classification is that the being has two eyes. There's not any
>mystery about this, there's no problem to be solved, no tortured and
>awkward explanations that have to be made to account for a statement
>like "humans have two eyes."
To say something "normal" about the being in question is to make a
synthetic proposition, since "normalcy" is not included in any
judgment of the nature of a being, it is included only in the context
of that which is abnormal to the being.
>With statements like what you just made above, it's evident that you
>just haven't come to understand how to think about these issues
>properly. Maybe it's time you gave some serious consideration to
>finally doing so.
And it would be helpful for you to actually come to an understanding
of the various sides of this issue before arriving at a judgment.
Robert J. Kolker
> To extend our knowledge of "body" is to discover that it has weight
> under certain conditions. The synthesis of the subject, 'body', with
> the predicate, 'has weight', must include conditions external to the
> subject. This is not how the knowledge is validated, as when Peikoff
> wrote, "Such truths cannot be validated merely by correctly applying
> the laws of logic." (TheAnalytic-Synthetic Dichotomy) Rather, to use
> Kant's own words, it is like this:
Are photons bodies? They have zero rest mass.
Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
Are photons ever at rest in reality? When at rest are they still
photons?
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Are photons ever at rest in reality? When at rest are they still
> photons?
Photons are never at rest and move at c (the speed of light) in free
space. They move slower when bound in matter, but still have zero rest mass.
Bob Kolker
Chris Cathcart
> On Fri, 23 May 2008 01:59:53 -0700, Chris Cathcart
>
> >"Ice floats on water" states a fact about ice, which pertains just as
> >much to the nature of the subject (ice) as does the statement "ice is
> >a solid."
>
> Of course these are all facts. But it is the *nature of the
> proposition* that it is contingent on ice actually floating on water.
> It is not necessary that the ice actually be floating on water *in
> order to be ice.*
But the "contingency" of the proposition is where confusion sets in.
If the distinction is between so-called necessary propositions and so-
called contingent propositions, where contingent propositions only
refer to actual particulars, then we aren't in a mess. But if it's
used to make distinctions between "kinds of truths" about the nature
of ice, then it's a mess. Ice floating on water isn't a contingent
truth. Maybe you're fine with that, in which case you might be better
off stating that it's something distinct, e.g., a "synthetic"
proposition -- that the statement about ice floating on water isn't
necessary for some particular piece of ice to be ice. But then you're
getting very much into statements about particulars -- their
particular circumstances. But let's say that, of a particular piece
of ice, not actually on water, that "This ice floats on liquid
water." I submit we *can* make adequate sense of that, and you have a
statement that doesn't fall neatly into this division between "kinds
of statements." In that sense, ice floating on liquid water is
necessary for the ice to be ice. Which is to say, we know whether it
*would* float on liquid water and that this is necessary to its being
ice.
> Peikoff uses the argument by ridicule in his counter-example of
> imagining the chunk of floating ice suddenly plummeting to the bottom
> of the water. That would also occur if you pushed or pulled it down to
> the bottom, and without contradicting its nature or making up
> ridiculous examples.
This only became "an issue" when Hume said he could imagine a piece of
ice doing anything the next moment because we haven't found necessity
in experience to invisibly bind all the things we see in experience
together. Kant figured that this was a problem requiring addressing.
> It is only necessary to imagine the ice in relationship to anything
> apart from the fact that it is a solid form of water, and you have
> grounds for forming synthetic statements with "ice" as the subject.
> Furthermore, the two types of propositions perform different functions
> for cognition. The analytic proposition is useful for adding clarity
> to the known nature of the subject, while the synthetic proposition is
> used for amplifying on what we already know about the subject in
> itself. Thus, for example, it is not necessary to do experiments with
> ice to know that it is a solid form of water, but it is necessary to
> do experiments (usually during childhood) to learn that it floats on
> water. It is then necessary (usually during adulthood) to learn why
> ice floats on water - water is about 9% denser than ice. And this is
> another fact that can only be garnered through experiment.
Somehow you say we have these things that require experiment at some
point, and yet you assume that it never required experiment at some
point to determine that ice is the solid form of water. The only
problem being that all of these required some kind of experimenting,
so your division ain't so clean.
> Kant, at least, did not say that one kind of statement "packs more
> punch" than the other kind. I'm not sure exactly what you're talking
> about there, or who believes such a thing.
Packs a different kind of punch? Does that help?
> >Implicit in the *concept* of a rational
> >animal (and yes, being a mental existent, a concept has identity), in
> >our *actual* understanding and not some hypothetical ivory-tower
> >understanding of the concept "man," is something more fleshed-out:
> >that we're talking about a being subsumed under the narrower
> >classification "mammal," and that the *normal* instance subsumed under
> >the classification is that the being has two eyes. There's not any
> >mystery about this, there's no problem to be solved, no tortured and
> >awkward explanations that have to be made to account for a statement
> >like "humans have two eyes."
>
> To say something "normal" about the being in question is to make a
> synthetic proposition, since "normalcy" is not included in any
> judgment of the nature of a being, it is included only in the context
> of that which is abnormal to the being.
See, you're just not thinking quite right about these things. "The
nature of a being" is just all the characteristics about that
being . . . which is to say that nature or identity pertains only to
particulars. So there isn't much sense in speaking about "what's
normal to a particular being" since particulars vary from each other.
It's "normal" to me that I have two blue eyes but then that doesn't
really tell us much of anything about a standard of normalcy. When I
speak of normalcy, I speak of what pertains to a *collection* of
entities that we've classified on some fundamental basis. It's not
"What's normal to the being that is me?" but rather: "What features do
I have that are normal for the classified collection ("kind") of
beings that I'm a part of?"
Sounds like you and/or Kant speak about "a being" or about "identity"
in an illicit fashion. Being and identity only occurs in
particulars. Generalities come from similarity amongst particulars.
You speak about "being" and "identity" like it applies to something
generic. (I said that being and identity can apply to a *concept*,
but a concept is a particular mental entity, generated by a mind to
aid it in cognizing economically about generalities.)
This is stuff that Rand thought most carefully and meticulously about,
so as not to do things like confuse generals and specifics.
Malrassic Park
I don't know of anything in the universe that is ever "at rest."
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> I don't know of anything in the universe that is ever "at rest."
Rest Mass means mass as measured in an inertial frame in which the body
is at rest. If you are sitting still in your chair you are at rest in
your chair.
Consult any textbook on Special Theory of Relativity.
Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
I never distinguished between kinds of truths, although I would hope
that the statements involved were true. It is true that ice floats on
water - when it isn't being pushed down from above or pulled down from
below. So the status of the proposition is both true and contingent
upon these conditions. If I were to claim that ice, absent extraneous
forces, sinks in water, then that would not be a truth, it is both
synthetic and false.
It is not true, however, that "ice floating on liquid water is
necessary for ice to be ice." And we don't know whether it would float
on liquid water prior to the first discovery of this fact.
As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
to be.
>> Peikoff uses the argument by ridicule in his counter-example of
>> imagining the chunk of floating ice suddenly plummeting to the bottom
>> of the water. That would also occur if you pushed or pulled it down to
>> the bottom, and without contradicting its nature or making up
>> ridiculous examples.
>
>This only became "an issue" when Hume said he could imagine a piece of
>ice doing anything the next moment because we haven't found necessity
>in experience to invisibly bind all the things we see in experience
>together. Kant figured that this was a problem requiring addressing.
That's because Hume was right in that there is no necessity in
experience. The purpose of Kant's introduction of synthetic and
analytic propositions is to bring ideas criticized by Hume within the
realm of the absolutely knowable, viz., mathematics. And so if 2+2=4
is true, synthetic a priori, and absolute without the aid of appealing
to experience, then so are other synthetic a priori judgments which
fall outside the mathematical realm, including judgments of causality.
>> It is only necessary to imagine the ice in relationship to anything
>> apart from the fact that it is a solid form of water, and you have
>> grounds for forming synthetic statements with "ice" as the subject.
>> Furthermore, the two types of propositions perform different functions
>> for cognition. The analytic proposition is useful for adding clarity
>> to the known nature of the subject, while the synthetic proposition is
>> used for amplifying on what we already know about the subject in
>> itself. Thus, for example, it is not necessary to do experiments with
>> ice to know that it is a solid form of water, but it is necessary to
>> do experiments (usually during childhood) to learn that it floats on
>> water. It is then necessary (usually during adulthood) to learn why
>> ice floats on water - water is about 9% denser than ice. And this is
>> another fact that can only be garnered through experiment.
>
>Somehow you say we have these things that require experiment at some
>point, and yet you assume that it never required experiment at some
>point to determine that ice is the solid form of water. The only
>problem being that all of these required some kind of experimenting,
>so your division ain't so clean.
You certainly can experiment in order to determine that a tautology
such as "ice is a solid form of water" is true. But it remains a
tautology, while "ice floats on water" is not a tautology.
>> Kant, at least, did not say that one kind of statement "packs more
>> punch" than the other kind. I'm not sure exactly what you're talking
>> about there, or who believes such a thing.
>
>Packs a different kind of punch? Does that help?
Tautologies are impressive to some, but not at all impressive to
others. In his article Peikoff is comparing apples to oranges, then
coming up with sour grapes.
The 'generalities' in question are supposed to apply to every
particular, that's why they are universals and not merely general.
Your analysis there begs the question of "similarity" and what makes
it a possible experience. We cannot know similarity without some
general a priori notions to begin from. Knowing what a concept is does
not answer any epistemological questions regarding similarity.
At any rate, it remains the case that to say something "normal" about
a PARTICULAR being in question is to make a synthetic proposition,
since "normalcy" is not included in any judgment about the nature of a
PARTICULAR being.
Robert J. Kolker
>
> As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
> can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
> that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
> For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
> necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
> on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
> substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
> your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
> to be.
Not so. First of all, ice is water in the solid state. If water-ice
floats on liquid water it is less dense than liquid water. Water has the
peculariar property of -expanding- when it freezes rather than
contracting. This is a property shared by few substances that occur in
all three states, solid, liquid and gas.
Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
I sincerely doubt that the theory of Rest Mass has anything to do with
macroscopic objects such as me sitting in my chair.
Malrassic Park
<robert...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Malrassic Park wrote:
>
>>
>> As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
>> can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
>> that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
>> For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
>> necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
>> on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
>> substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
>> your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
>> to be.
>
>Not so. First of all, ice is water in the solid state.
Which you already know ice to be.
>If water-ice floats on liquid water it is less dense than liquid water.
That is in addition to your original knowledge about ice.
>Water has the peculariar property of -expanding- when it freezes rather than
>contracting.
That is also in addition to your original knowledge about ice.
>This is a property shared by few substances that occur in all three states,
>solid, liquid and gas.
Still, it is shared by some other substances, so it is hardly a
defining characteristic or property of ice.
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Still, it is shared by some other substances, so it is hardly a
> defining characteristic or property of ice.
It is a unique property of ice which is made of water.
The point is that the fact ice -floats- on liquid water tells us a lot
about the water. it is the particular angles that the hydrogen bonds
make with the oxygen that causes water to -expand- when it enters the
solid state.
Your perambulations are a good example of why philosphy is useless in
physics. When physics and philosophy parted company (somewhere around
the time of Kepler ang Galileo) it was a major step forward for physics.
The first thing that had to be dumped was Aristotle's nonsense.
Over the period of time (say from Galileo till now) the
phenomenological-empirical aspects of physics science have pretty well
overwhelmed any metaphysical considerations.
Bob Kolker
Bob Kolker
Chris Cathcart
> On Fri, 23 May 2008 14:54:25 -0700, "Robert J. Kolker"
>
> >Malrassic Park wrote:
>
> >> As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
> >> can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
> >> that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
> >> For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
> >> necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
> >> on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
> >> substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
> >> your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
> >> to be.
>
> >Not so. First of all, ice is water in the solid state.
>
> Which you already know ice to be.
>
> >If water-ice floats on liquid water it is less dense than liquid water.
>
> That is in addition to your original knowledge about ice.
>
> >Water has the peculariar property of -expanding- when it freezes rather than
> >contracting.
>
> That is also in addition to your original knowledge about ice.
Thing is, in an emprically-oriented neo-Aristotelian philosophy, there
is no special thing marked out as the "original knowledge" of ice. To
arrive at (much less validate at some later point) our understanding
of what ice is, we need to go through a process of differentiating and
integrating instances of things we encounter in the world. You want
some kind of "original" in an a priori sense that captures the
definition of the thing, but the definition only marks out some things
and not others that may or may not be original to our understanding
even in your a priori sense. I see no reason to treat our knowledge
that ice is the solid state of water as being any more a priori to our
understanding of its nature than our knowledge that it expands when it
freezes. Looks to me like we might very well come to know those
simultaneously in our chronological order of understanding, and that
each fact has the same order of "aprioristic" necessity.
About the only valid division you can come up with is statements
pertaining the definitional characteristics of something vs.
statements that don't state definitional characteristics. The other
divisions are arbitrary as to how we know about things in the world.
It's arbitrary for you to say that we do some kind of connecting
synthesis in the case of cowness and being incapable of unaided
flight, but just drawing out what's already contained in the meaning
the meaning in the case of cowness and hoofed ruminantness.
What you seem to end up saying is that we could encounter new
knowledge applicable to all cows that wouldn't alter our understanding
of the nature of cows. Do you not see how strange it is to say that?
Okay, let's apply it to human beings -- man -- who we've defined as a
rational animal. The danger here is in whether we treat this
definition rationalistically, or whether we're sensitive to the
context in which the definition arose. A modern updated neo-
Aristotelian, not being an advocate of natural kinds, says that we've
united humans under a definition stating rationality and animality,
that applies to all members of that class, and which we use as an
economic means of classifying them and referring to the class. But
that isn't to say there is some ultimate essence that we've grasped
which disallows us from making further sub-divisions at some future
point on the basis of some future discovery, or that our identifying
essential characteristics marks out "the nature of the being" that
we've classified. It only marks out fundamental distinguishing
features for purposes of ease of wholly useful classification. So
let's say that we discover, using updated scientific means, things
about humans that we didn't know before, that we couldn't have known
using the technology available to the ancient Greeks. That would
entail an addition to or a revision of our understanding of the nature
of the entities we've mentally grouped.
This is all a very inductive and experience-receptive approach to how
we can come to give content to and make connections amongst our
concepts. Your approach suggests something more free-floating, that
the definitions are just there a priori. Don't worry, even Randians
are prone to this kind of rationalism. Why, not too long ago, one
fairly well-known, prolifically-published, long-time "neo-Objectivist"
professor of philosophy, presented this idea that the nature of
something is its essence traditionally understood. Needless to say I
schooled this professor in a web forum on this very point. Some grasp
the matter of essence in proper neo-Aristotelian fashion, and some
just never get it. Much better examples of modern Aristotelianism,
such as Rasmussen and Den Uyl, specified their "Aristotelian
essentialism" to mean that "essence" comprises the nature of a being
in its totality -- a new understanding of the meaning of "essence,"
but at least they grasp that you don't go around separating up
features of things in thought and pretend that you're pointing to any
actual divisions in reality.
So what is the nature or identity (and "essence" in this one sense) of
ice? Everything about it -- the density, the temperature
requirements, the propensity to float on ice, the molecular structure
of its molecules, everything. What exactly is Kant doing here that
you think is so profound and important to our understanding? Your guy
says that we need to have categorical judgments to unite concepts in a
way that generates experience in the full sense. Hogwash. It's
already all there, in the ice.
Chris Cathcart
But I just specified the sense in which such a statement is true.
Call it a counterfactual truth about ice, if you have to -- this piece
of ice would float on water, because that is necessary to what this
piece of ice is.
> And we don't know whether it would float
> on liquid water prior to the first discovery of this fact.
We might know, we might not. We could see discover ice floating on
the water before we figure out why it does so. In fact, that's most
likely the order in which we discovered stuff, and you're being all
rationalistic about it. But now you want to say that there's apriori
knowledge about the ice that gets reflected in "ice is the solid form
of water" but doesn't get reflected in "ice floats on water" until we
get your Kantian synthesis to give us a synthetic apriori. But like
I've said, the initial distinction is groundless and arbitrary. Both
statements need as much or as little synthesis to give us necessarily
true statements about the nature of ice.
I know it would trouble you greatly to have to go all the way back to
the drawing board on all this stuff, but there you go.
Pop quiz: how would the statement "ice is the solid form of water"
*not* require just the same kind of Kantian synthesis you say that
that the other statement requires?
That's the crux of your whole Kantian edifice. If we don't need to
have synthesis to explain how we understand necessary causal truths
about things, the whole Kantian project is superfluous. Wouldn't that
just ruin your day. But the onus is on you. You're the one begging
the question that we need synthesis to get necessity. Sorry, won't
do.
What's with this primitive mentality that without some metaphysical
glue tying everything together, we're out of luck on the whole
necessity thing? Hume assumed there needed to be glue, but that of
course we didn't experience the glue, so there's no basis for
believing necessity. Kant came up with this whole elaborate story
that the glue can be supplied by us so that we're ensured of having
it, but only as it applies to constituted-experience. It's a total
cluster-fuck. You just can't handle the simple idea that things have
natures on their own and behave accordingly, can you.
> As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
> can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
> that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
> For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
> necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
> on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
> substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
> your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
> to be.
It's necessary to the nature of ice that it float on water, just like
it's necessary to the nature of some other things that they float on
water. So what? It's still just as much inherent to ice's nature as
its molecular structure is.
> >This only became "an issue" when Hume said he could imagine a piece of
> >ice doing anything the next moment because we haven't found necessity
> >in experience to invisibly bind all the things we see in experience
> >together. Kant figured that this was a problem requiring addressing.
>
> That's because Hume was right in that there is no necessity in
> experience.
Well, Hume is just wrong about that. He wasn't approaching this whole
subject in the right way. All that experience *ever* gives us, is
necessity. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Kantian.
Sez you in all your rationalistic fervor, and not exactly responsive
to what I said. Concepts carry the benefit of unit-economy while also
carrying with them implicit reference to the normal as it applies to
categorized units. You have this notion that concepts are just
supposed to ignore such contextual considerations. The context for
the concept "man" includes the recognition that "has two eyes" states
a normalcy about things in the class, so that we make sense of "man
has two eyes." That's it. You wanna throw in more complicated things
to try and validate unwarranted divisions. Sorry, but concepts serve
a specific cognitive function, and they don't fit into your
rationalistic model of what they're supposed to do. There are no
intrinsic universals so you're gonna be out of luck on that count.
> Your analysis there begs the question of "similarity" and what makes
> it a possible experience. We cannot know similarity without some
> general a priori notions to begin from.
Sez you. You're nuts. Similarity is very bedrock fundamental stuff
to the most basic buildings blocks of sense experience, and it's there
for us to recognize and grasp, ostensively.
> At any rate, it remains the case that to say something "normal" about
> a PARTICULAR being in question is to make a synthetic proposition,
> since "normalcy" is not included in any judgment about the nature of a
> PARTICULAR being.
Hmmm. I'm gonna have to take some extra time to parse that one.
Malrassic Park
<robert...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Malrassic Park wrote:
..
>> Still, it is shared by some other substances, so it is hardly a
>> defining characteristic or property of ice.
..
>It is a unique property of ice which is made of water.
..
>The point is that the fact ice -floats- on liquid water tells us a lot
>about the water. it is the particular angles that the hydrogen bonds
>make with the oxygen that causes water to -expand- when it enters the
>solid state.
As I said, it adds to our original knowledge of ice.
>Your perambulations are a good example of why philosphy is useless in
>physics. When physics and philosophy parted company (somewhere around
>the time of Kepler ang Galileo) it was a major step forward for physics.
However, your perambulations are not disagreeing with mine.
>The first thing that had to be dumped was Aristotle's nonsense.
Except the logic.
>Over the period of time (say from Galileo till now) the
>phenomenological-empirical aspects of physics science have pretty well
>overwhelmed any metaphysical considerations.
The idea that the substance of a thing like an ice cube persists over
time is a metaphysical consideration.
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> The idea that the substance of a thing like an ice cube persists over
> time is a metaphysical consideration.
Until the ice cube melts.
I am underwhelmed with the metaphysical conclusion that things last a
while. Wow!
If they didn't there would be Nothing instead of Something.
Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
<cath...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On May 23, 4:25 pm, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 23 May 2008 14:54:25 -0700, "Robert J. Kolker"
..
>> <robert_kol...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >Malrassic Park wrote:
..
>> >> As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
>> >> can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
>> >> that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
>> >> For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
>> >> necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
>> >> on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
>> >> substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
>> >> your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
>> >> to be.
..
>> >Not so. First of all, ice is water in the solid state.
..
>> Which you already know ice to be.
..
>> >If water-ice floats on liquid water it is less dense than liquid water.
..
>> That is in addition to your original knowledge about ice.
..
>> >Water has the peculariar property of -expanding- when it freezes rather
>> >than
>> >contracting.
..
>> That is also in addition to your original knowledge about ice.
..
>Thing is, in an emprically-oriented neo-Aristotelian philosophy, there
>is no special thing marked out as the "original knowledge" of ice. To
>arrive at (much less validate at some later point) our understanding
>of what ice is, we need to go through a process of differentiating and
>integrating instances of things we encounter in the world. You want
>some kind of "original" in an a priori sense that captures the
>definition of the thing, but the definition only marks out some things
>and not others that may or may not be original to our understanding
>even in your a priori sense. I see no reason to treat our knowledge
>that ice is the solid state of water as being any more a priori to our
>understanding of its nature than our knowledge that it expands when it
>freezes. Looks to me like we might very well come to know those
>simultaneously in our chronological order of understanding, and that
>each fact has the same order of "aprioristic" necessity.
The statement "ice is a solid form of water" cannot possibly be
transcendentally a priori, or 'original' in the Kantian sense, as it
contains empirical elements. That part of cognition or experience
which is original is the transcendental element, or that element which
"awaits" some empirical content vis-a-vis the a posteriori. In a time
frame such as you mentioned, much knowledge regarding ice may arrive
before knowing the fact that it is a solid form of water.
What is "original" in this case is the original knowledge that "to be
whatever a substance is" is a tautology, even if a person doesn't have
the intellectual ability to describe his knowledge that way. Ice is a
solid form of water, ice cannot be anything but a solid form of water,
and a solid form of water must of necessity be ice no matter what
conditions this substance is placed under. The knowledge of substance
as permanence is original a priori.
>About the only valid division you can come up with is statements
>pertaining the definitional characteristics of something vs.
>statements that don't state definitional characteristics. The other
>divisions are arbitrary as to how we know about things in the world.
>It's arbitrary for you to say that we do some kind of connecting
>synthesis in the case of cowness and being incapable of unaided
>flight, but just drawing out what's already contained in the meaning
>the meaning in the case of cowness and hoofed ruminantness.
..
>What you seem to end up saying is that we could encounter new
>knowledge applicable to all cows that wouldn't alter our understanding
>of the nature of cows. Do you not see how strange it is to say that?
>Okay, let's apply it to human beings -- man -- who we've defined as a
>rational animal. The danger here is in whether we treat this
>definition rationalistically, or whether we're sensitive to the
>context in which the definition arose. A modern updated neo-
>Aristotelian, not being an advocate of natural kinds, says that we've
>united humans under a definition stating rationality and animality,
>that applies to all members of that class, and which we use as an
>economic means of classifying them and referring to the class. But
>that isn't to say there is some ultimate essence that we've grasped
>which disallows us from making further sub-divisions at some future
>point on the basis of some future discovery, or that our identifying
>essential characteristics marks out "the nature of the being" that
>we've classified. It only marks out fundamental distinguishing
>features for purposes of ease of wholly useful classification. So
>let's say that we discover, using updated scientific means, things
>about humans that we didn't know before, that we couldn't have known
>using the technology available to the ancient Greeks. That would
>entail an addition to or a revision of our understanding of the nature
>of the entities we've mentally grouped.
..
>This is all a very inductive and experience-receptive approach to how
>we can come to give content to and make connections amongst our
>concepts. Your approach suggests something more free-floating, that
>the definitions are just there a priori. Don't worry, even Randians
>are prone to this kind of rationalism. Why, not too long ago, one
>fairly well-known, prolifically-published, long-time "neo-Objectivist"
>professor of philosophy, presented this idea that the nature of
>something is its essence traditionally understood. Needless to say I
>schooled this professor in a web forum on this very point. Some grasp
>the matter of essence in proper neo-Aristotelian fashion, and some
>just never get it. Much better examples of modern Aristotelianism,
>such as Rasmussen and Den Uyl, specified their "Aristotelian
>essentialism" to mean that "essence" comprises the nature of a being
>in its totality -- a new understanding of the meaning of "essence,"
>but at least they grasp that you don't go around separating up
>features of things in thought and pretend that you're pointing to any
>actual divisions in reality.
The analytic-synthetic distinction is a division between propositions,
not a division in reality. To mistake it as a division in the nature
of being, rather than in the nature of thought, is a common error.
>So what is the nature or identity (and "essence" in this one sense) of
>ice? Everything about it -- the density, the temperature
>requirements, the propensity to float on ice, the molecular structure
>of its molecules, everything. What exactly is Kant doing here that
>you think is so profound and important to our understanding? Your guy
>says that we need to have categorical judgments to unite concepts in a
>way that generates experience in the full sense. Hogwash. It's
>already all there, in the ice.
My guy is only saying that the subject and object of propositions are
conjoined either synthetically or analytically, and that these are
mutually exclusive and exhaustive forms of propositions. But notice
how you have so easily slipped back into speech about essence
"traditionally understood" ("it's already all there, in the ice"), and
that renaming it "nature" or "identity" does not detract from it being
only more of the same old "essence" talk that is neither profound nor
important to our understanding, as Kolker has often intimated on this
forum.
Malrassic Park
You are now circling back to the beginning, but only elucidating the
meaning of the original truism "ice floats on water," drawing out what
makes it true in order to give it the appearance of a different idea.
I don't see anything counterfactual against me about this. It is ice,
therefore it would float on water, necessarily; or, ice necessarily
floats on water; or, ice floats on water. All of these statements
contain identical ideas about ice. And none of it detracts from my
denial that "ice floating on liquid water is necessary for ice to be
ice." It is not necessary for ice to do anything, ice is just ice.
That is a tautology, and only as analytical as saying "ice is just a
solid form of water."
>> And we don't know whether it would float
>> on liquid water prior to the first discovery of this fact.
>
>We might know, we might not. We could see discover ice floating on
>the water before we figure out why it does so. In fact, that's most
>likely the order in which we discovered stuff, and you're being all
>rationalistic about it. But now you want to say that there's apriori
>knowledge about the ice that gets reflected in "ice is the solid form
>of water" but doesn't get reflected in "ice floats on water" until we
>get your Kantian synthesis to give us a synthetic apriori. But like
>I've said, the initial distinction is groundless and arbitrary. Both
>statements need as much or as little synthesis to give us necessarily
>true statements about the nature of ice.
That's not the way to answer me, which is, we might know that ice
would float on liquid water prior to the first discovery of the fact
simply by using inference. But either way, the resulting statement of
fact is synthetic, since "floats on water" is not analytical to the
concept "ice" even if it is the nature of ice to float on water. It is
not necessary for ice to float on water in order to *be* ice. But it
is necessary for ice to be a solid form of water in order to be ice.
I don't see where I said anything regarding a priori knowledge about
the ice that gets reflected in "ice floats on water" until we get my
Kantian synthesis to give us a synthetic a priori. I don't see how
your paraphrasing could very well summarize my original statement
since yours was longer, not shorter than, the original, and contains a
lot of concepts not found in it.
>I know it would trouble you greatly to have to go all the way back to
>the drawing board on all this stuff, but there you go.
>
>Pop quiz: how would the statement "ice is the solid form of water"
>*not* require just the same kind of Kantian synthesis you say that
>that the other statement requires?
>
>That's the crux of your whole Kantian edifice. If we don't need to
>have synthesis to explain how we understand necessary causal truths
>about things, the whole Kantian project is superfluous. Wouldn't that
>just ruin your day. But the onus is on you. You're the one begging
>the question that we need synthesis to get necessity. Sorry, won't
>do.
Is the proposition "ice is the solid form of water" a necessary causal
truth, that is, synthetic a priori? I fail to see the causality in it,
as in a statement such as, "Sufficiently cold temperatures cause water
to freeze into ice."
A synthesis requires two or more distinct concepts. But "ice" and
"solid form of water" are one and the same concept, so no synthesis of
the two is necessary in forming the proposition, only an analysis of
what ice is, that is to say, the constituent concepts of "ice." And of
course there is such a thing, according to Rand, as constituent
concepts: 'The meaning of "furniture" cannot be grasped unless one
has first grasped the meaning of its constituent concepts.' (ITOE, 22)
So if you, as did Rand, analyze the concept "furniture," you come up
with its constituent concepts: "Movable man-made objects intended to
be used in a human habitation, which can support the weight of the
human body or support and/or store other, smaller objects." The fact
that furniture floats on water has nothing to do with Rand's analysis
of this concept, and indeed, hers is an analytic proposition.
>What's with this primitive mentality that without some metaphysical
>glue tying everything together, we're out of luck on the whole
>necessity thing? Hume assumed there needed to be glue, but that of
>course we didn't experience the glue, so there's no basis for
>believing necessity. Kant came up with this whole elaborate story
>that the glue can be supplied by us so that we're ensured of having
>it, but only as it applies to constituted-experience. It's a total
>cluster-fuck. You just can't handle the simple idea that things have
>natures on their own and behave accordingly, can you.
I'm sure things do have a nature of their own, but in this case we're
talking about the nature of two kinds of mutually exclusive and
exhaustive propositions, the analytic and the synthetic, so the former
would have to be a topic for another thread.
>> As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
>> can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
>> that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
>> For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
>> necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
>> on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
>> substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
>> your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
>> to be.
..
>It's necessary to the nature of ice that it float on water, just like
>it's necessary to the nature of some other things that they float on
>water. So what? It's still just as much inherent to ice's nature as
>its molecular structure is.
I am not talking about what is inherent to the nature of ice, only
what is inherent to the nature of our propositions regarding ice.
>> >This only became "an issue" when Hume said he could imagine a piece of
>> >ice doing anything the next moment because we haven't found necessity
>> >in experience to invisibly bind all the things we see in experience
>> >together. Kant figured that this was a problem requiring addressing.
..
>> That's because Hume was right in that there is no necessity in
>> experience.
..
>Well, Hume is just wrong about that. He wasn't approaching this whole
>subject in the right way. All that experience *ever* gives us, is
>necessity. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Kantian.
"Some facts are not necessary, but all truths are." (OPAR, 111) Are
you saying that experience only gives truths?
>> >> >Implicit in the *concept* of a rational
>> >> >animal (and yes, being a mental existent, a concept has identity), in
>> >> >our *actual* understanding and not some hypothetical ivory-tower
>> >> >understanding of the concept "man," is something more fleshed-out:
>> >> >that we're talking about a being subsumed under the narrower
>> >> >classification "mammal," and that the *normal* instance subsumed under
>> >> >the classification is that the being has two eyes. There's not any
>> >> >mystery about this, there's no problem to be solved, no tortured and
>> >> >awkward explanations that have to be made to account for a statement
>> >> >like "humans have two eyes."
..
>> >> To say something "normal" about the being in question is to make a
>> >> synthetic proposition, since "normalcy" is not included in any
>> >> judgment of the nature of a being, it is included only in the context
>> >> of that which is abnormal to the being.
..
>> >See, you're just not thinking quite right about these things. "The
>> >nature of a being" is just all the characteristics about that
>> >being . . . which is to say that nature or identity pertains only to
>> >particulars. So there isn't much sense in speaking about "what's
>> >normal to a particular being" since particulars vary from each other.
>> >It's "normal" to me that I have two blue eyes but then that doesn't
>> >really tell us much of anything about a standard of normalcy. When I
>> >speak of normalcy, I speak of what pertains to a *collection* of
>> >entities that we've classified on some fundamental basis. It's not
>> >"What's normal to the being that is me?" but rather: "What features do
>> >I have that are normal for the classified collection ("kind") of
>> >beings that I'm a part of?"
..
>> >Sounds like you and/or Kant speak about "a being" or about "identity"
>> >in an illicit fashion. Being and identity only occurs in
>> >particulars. Generalities come from similarity amongst particulars.
>> >You speak about "being" and "identity" like it applies to something
>> >generic. (I said that being and identity can apply to a *concept*,
>> >but a concept is a particular mental entity, generated by a mind to
>> >aid it in cognizing economically about generalities.)
..
>> >This is stuff that Rand thought most carefully and meticulously about,
>> >so as not to do things like confuse generals and specifics.
..
>> The 'generalities' in question are supposed to apply to every
>> particular, that's why they are universals and not merely general.
..
>Sez you in all your rationalistic fervor, and not exactly responsive
>to what I said. Concepts carry the benefit of unit-economy while also
>carrying with them implicit reference to the normal as it applies to
>categorized units. You have this notion that concepts are just
>supposed to ignore such contextual considerations. The context for
>the concept "man" includes the recognition that "has two eyes" states
>a normalcy about things in the class, so that we make sense of "man
>has two eyes." That's it. You wanna throw in more complicated things
>to try and validate unwarranted divisions. Sorry, but concepts serve
>a specific cognitive function, and they don't fit into your
>rationalistic model of what they're supposed to do. There are no
>intrinsic universals so you're gonna be out of luck on that count.
I never said there were intrinsic universals, only that, in the
definition of man, rationality and animality must be considered its
only universals, whereas "possessing two eyes" cannot be considered a
universal to any definition of man. This isn't complicated, it only
becomes complicated when someone has to gyrate like a belly-dancing
hippo in order to invalidate valid concepts. I never thought the
distinction was complicated at all. But sometimes people just want to
make it seem like more than it really is, as when you try to
invalidate it as a distinction between essences.
Analytical propositions do ignore contextual considerations, that is
their function. They are what is left over when one has "boiled away"
all context and conditions surrounding the subject of an analytical
statement. That is not wrong-headed because it leaves one with a
clearer concept of the subject's identity without detracting from any
wider context or from the idea that such a context may also be
relevant.
What we're talking about here, on the other hand, is not ontological
context or conditions, but epistemic context, that is, the importance
of epistemic methods within which analytic statements acquire
relevancy.
There is no such concept, by the way, as "normalcy about things in a
class."
>> Your analysis there begs the question of "similarity" and what makes
>> it a possible experience. We cannot know similarity without some
>> general a priori notions to begin from.
>
>Sez you. You're nuts. Similarity is very bedrock fundamental stuff
>to the most basic buildings blocks of sense experience, and it's there
>for us to recognize and grasp, ostensively.
"Similarity" is the bedrock for you only because Rand failed to take
her argument any deeper, but that is the only reason. If Rand truly
wanted to discuss epistemology, not concept-formation (thus
erroneously assuming, as a package-deal, that "knowledge" and
"concept" are the same thing), she should have begun by analyzing how
knowledge of similarity is possible.
>> At any rate, it remains the case that to say something "normal" about
>> a PARTICULAR being in question is to make a synthetic proposition,
>> since "normalcy" is not included in any judgment about the nature of a
>> PARTICULAR being.
>
>Hmmm. I'm gonna have to take some extra time to parse that one.
For example, "Man is normally a rational being," vs. "That man is
normally a rational being."
Malrassic Park
<robert...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Malrassic Park wrote:
..
>> The idea that the substance of a thing like an ice cube persists over
>> time is a metaphysical consideration.
..
>Until the ice cube melts.
Red herring argument. You're now talking about water, not ice.
>I am underwhelmed with the metaphysical conclusion that things last a
>while. Wow!
..
>If they didn't there would be Nothing instead of Something.
..
>Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>
> The analytic-synthetic distinction is a division between propositions,
> not a division in reality. To mistake it as a division in the nature
> of being, rather than in the nature of thought, is a common error.
An analytic judgement cannot be denied without implying a frank
contradiction (of the form P is not P). A synthetic judgement can be
denied, which means it is possible for it to be false. The only way to
find out whether said judgement is true or false is to look which means
you find out after you look which means it is not a prior true (if true)
or a priori false (if false). Synthetic judgements are known to be true
a posteriori and only a posterior. The Synthetic A Priori is bogus from
the git-go which is why Kant's "refuation" of Hume is bogus.
Consistent non-Euclidean geometry shoots down one of Kant's premiere
examples of the so-called synthetic a priori. The empirical correctness
of non-Newtonian physics also kills another example. The -proof- that 5
+ 7 = 12 by purely formal means kills a third of his examples of the
synthetic a priori. Kant failed. Hume lives!
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Red herring argument. You're now talking about water, not ice.
Ice IS water (i.e. H2O). It is water in the solid state. A proposition
known a posteriori. It took thousands of years for humans to find out
what water -really is-.
Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
So your argument boils down to saying that ice is not always ice, that
is, not always the solid state of water, because it can melt. Damn,
you're an amazing philosopher, Bob.
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> So your argument boils down to saying that ice is not always ice, that
> is, not always the solid state of water, because it can melt. Damn,
> you're an amazing philosopher, Bob.
No. I am saying that ice is water in the solid state not to be confused
with "dry ice" which is CO2 in the solid state.
Only a philosopher like you can make the simple difficult.
Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
<robert...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Here's where Mal makes Robert Kolker eat his own words.
>Malrassic Park wrote:
>
>>
>> The analytic-synthetic distinction is a division between propositions,
>> not a division in reality. To mistake it as a division in the nature
>> of being, rather than in the nature of thought, is a common error.
>
>An analytic judgement cannot be denied without implying a frank
>contradiction (of the form P is not P).
"Ice floats on water" is a synthetic judgment whose negation is a
contradiction. This has always been part of the Objectivist
counter-argument.
> A synthetic judgement can be
>denied, which means it is possible for it to be false. The only way to
>find out whether said judgement is true or false is to look which means
>you find out after you look which means it is not a prior true (if true)
>or a priori false (if false). Synthetic judgements are known to be true
>a posteriori and only a posterior. The Synthetic A Priori is bogus from
>the git-go which is why Kant's "refuation" of Hume is bogus.
So you are only an algorithm after all.
>Consistent non-Euclidean geometry shoots down one of Kant's premiere
This claim of yours, which is not original with you by any means, has
been easily shot down many times in the past. It is only because
Euclidean geometry is synthetic a priori that it could be shot down.
http://www.friesian.com/space.htm
'Kant does not believe that the axioms of geometry are self-evident or
true in any logically necessary way. They are logically "synthetic,"
which means that they may be denied without contradiction.'
Thus you are contradicting your own thesis, "An analytic judgement
cannot be denied without implying a frank contradiction." Euclidean
geometry, AS synthetic a priori, MAY BE DENIED WITHOUT CONTRADICTION,
by inverting your own words.
Kant's theory of the synthetic a priori ended Euclid's hold over our
thinking about geometry.
>examples of the so-called synthetic a priori. The empirical correctness
>of non-Newtonian physics also kills another example. The -proof- that 5
>+ 7 = 12 by purely formal means kills a third of his examples of the
>synthetic a priori. Kant failed. Hume lives!
You could prove by purely formal means that 5 + 7 =/ 12. Therefore
Kant lives.
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> "Ice floats on water" is a synthetic judgment whose negation is a
> contradiction. This has always been part of the Objectivist
> counter-argument.
Asserting that ice does not float on water contradicts a contingent fact
of this world. It does not produce a logical contradiction. It is a
fact that H2O in its solid form floats on H2O in its liquid form. It so
happens to be the case.
A counterfactual assertion is NOT a contradiction per se. It does
happens to be an assertion which is not true. If I say I have exactly 5
dollars in my wallet and I find out there is a one dollar bill rolled up
and hidden in one of the pockets of my wallet, I have not utter a
contradiction (such as X is a married bachelor). Rather, I have utter a
false statement. Contingently false is not the same as being a
contradiction. A contradiction is false in every possible world. A
contingently false statement is false in some possible worlds but not in
others.
Bob Kolker
Chris Cathcart
> You are now circling back to the beginning, but only elucidating the
> meaning of the original truism "ice floats on water," drawing out what
> makes it true in order to give it the appearance of a different idea.
> I don't see anything counterfactual against me about this. It is ice,
> therefore it would float on water, necessarily; or, ice necessarily
> floats on water; or, ice floats on water. All of these statements
> contain identical ideas about ice. And none of it detracts from my
> denial that "ice floating on liquid water is necessary for ice to be
> ice." It is not necessary for ice to do anything, ice is just ice.
> That is a tautology, and only as analytical as saying "ice is just a
> solid form of water."
But see, this is where you're wrong. Given whatever conditions, it is
necessary for ice to do specific things. Do you mean to say that
introducing the conditions somehow detracts from the necessity? But
that's your *assumption*, which I am challenging as unfounded.
> That's not the way to answer me, which is, we might know that ice
> would float on liquid water prior to the first discovery of the fact
> simply by using inference. But either way, the resulting statement of
> fact is synthetic, since "floats on water" is not analytical to the
> concept "ice" even if it is the nature of ice to float on water. It is
> not necessary for ice to float on water in order to *be* ice. But it
> is necessary for ice to be a solid form of water in order to be ice.
I don't think you know how ridiculous you sound, because I don't think
you'd be saying this if you did. You say that it is not necessary for
ice to float on water in order for it to be ice. But if it didn't
float on water, it wouldn't be ice. If you mean to say that you
needn't actually put a piece of ice onto liquid water in order for
that piece of ice to be a piece of ice, then that's true but it's not
saying anything and only gums up the works in any useful discussion
about necessity. We're talking about necessity here, in the specific
sense in which it is discussed by Hume and Kant and Rand. Not some
other sense of necessity that has no bearing here.
> >Pop quiz: how would the statement "ice is the solid form of water"
> >*not* require just the same kind of Kantian synthesis you say that
> >that the other statement requires?
>
> >That's the crux of your whole Kantian edifice. If we don't need to
> >have synthesis to explain how we understand necessary causal truths
> >about things, the whole Kantian project is superfluous. Wouldn't that
> >just ruin your day. But the onus is on you. You're the one begging
> >the question that we need synthesis to get necessity. Sorry, won't
> >do.
>
> Is the proposition "ice is the solid form of water" a necessary causal
> truth, that is, synthetic a priori? I fail to see the causality in it,
> as in a statement such as, "Sufficiently cold temperatures cause water
> to freeze into ice."
You just, in your own way, stumbled right upon a neo-Aristotelian
conception of causality, and failed to see the implications staring
you right in the face. *Any* statement that you make about the nature
of a thing is a causal statement. You're the one assuming that the
meaning of some concept of a thing can be separated from causal
statements you can make about it. The only distinction -- and it's
not really helpful for anything -- is between a literal tautology --
"ice is ice" -- and something informative that you can say about.
Since we're not dealing in literal tautologies here, we can confine
our discussion to informative things that we can say. And here you
are trying to have it -- as an assumption, and unwarranted -- that we
can make philosophically relevant distinctions amongst the various
kinds of informative things we can say about a thing. I submit that
it is philosophers who didn't learn to think properly that came up
with these distinctions to try to make sense out of their already-
broken understanding.
> A synthesis requires two or more distinct concepts. But "ice" and
> "solid form of water" are one and the same concept,
This is just sloppy. "Ice" as a concept subsumes a number of
different informative things that you can say about it. Since a
concept covers all past, present and future instances, it subsumes
counterfactuals -- any piece of ice that we put onto liquid water at
some point in the future is going to float.
How could you have devoted this many years to hardcore philosophical
study and be this sloppy?
so no synthesis of
> the two is necessary in forming the proposition, only an analysis of
> what ice is, that is to say, the constituent concepts of "ice." And of
> course there is such a thing, according to Rand, as constituent
> concepts: 'The meaning of "furniture" cannot be grasped unless one
> has first grasped the meaning of its constituent concepts.' (ITOE, 22)
> So if you, as did Rand, analyze the concept "furniture," you come up
> with its constituent concepts: "Movable man-made objects intended to
> be used in a human habitation, which can support the weight of the
> human body or support and/or store other, smaller objects." The fact
> that furniture floats on water has nothing to do with Rand's analysis
> of this concept, and indeed, hers is an analytic proposition.
I haven't much of an idea what you're getting at here. The only stuff
that makes sense is the stuff you quoted from Rand. And now you're
onto "furniture floats on water." Try and be less sloppy, hmmmm?
> >What's with this primitive mentality that without some metaphysical
> >glue tying everything together, we're out of luck on the whole
> >necessity thing? Hume assumed there needed to be glue, but that of
> >course we didn't experience the glue, so there's no basis for
> >believing necessity. Kant came up with this whole elaborate story
> >that the glue can be supplied by us so that we're ensured of having
> >it, but only as it applies to constituted-experience. It's a total
> >cluster-fuck. You just can't handle the simple idea that things have
> >natures on their own and behave accordingly, can you.
>
> I'm sure things do have a nature of their own, but in this case we're
> talking about the nature of two kinds of mutually exclusive and
> exhaustive propositions, the analytic and the synthetic, so the former
> would have to be a topic for another thread.
There are two kinds of mutually exclusive propositions -- ones that
state the definition of a concept, and ones that don't. You and Hume
and Kant think that there's something of profound philosophical
relevance to the distinction.
>
>
>
> >> As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
> >> can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
> >> that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
> >> For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
> >> necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
> >> on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
> >> substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
> >> your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
> >> to be.
> ..
> >It's necessary to the nature of ice that it float on water, just like
> >it's necessary to the nature of some other things that they float on
> >water. So what? It's still just as much inherent to ice's nature as
> >its molecular structure is.
>
> I am not talking about what is inherent to the nature of ice, only
> what is inherent to the nature of our propositions regarding ice.
I only with that were so, but it's you and Hume and Kant that derive
something of profound philosophical relevance from what should be an
otherwise unimportant observation about our propositions. You and
Hume and Kant all agree that we derive from this that necessity is not
to be found in experience, for instance.
Speak of the devil:
> >> That's because Hume was right in that there is no necessity in
> >> experience.
> ..
> >Well, Hume is just wrong about that. He wasn't approaching this whole
> >subject in the right way. All that experience *ever* gives us, is
> >necessity. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Kantian.
>
> "Some facts are not necessary, but all truths are." (OPAR, 111) Are
> you saying that experience only gives truths?
Actually, Peikoff is mistaken about this point, even if the context of
the statement (which you didn't specify) is regarding man-made facts.
(It's ITOE, by the way, not OPAR.) Peikoff is indeed trying to get at
a correct point as it relates to man-made facts, but he just didn't
state it right. A fact, once it is actualized as a fact (and there is
no other way for a fact to be than actual), is necessary. I think in
making such a statement, he undercuts his case. He used the example
of the number of states in the United States; he was making the
distinction between facts that had to be so, and those that didn't
have to be so, the relevant distinguishing factor being human
freedom. But from there he slips. The fact that there are 50 states
*is* necessary now that there are 50 states. Which is to say that it
can't be otherwise that right now, there are 50 states. Peikoff's
discussion is best applied to facts that will be actualized *in the
future*. It's not necessary that 50 years from now, there will be 50
states. Which is to say, that the number of states in the future is
not necesitated by all its antecedent conditions. Peikoff's only
point is about what had to be so, and what didn't have to be so; I
think it unfortunate that he had to bring in the term "necessity" the
way he did to explain this point.
Now, it's up to *you* to figure out, non-sloppily, what is and is not
implied in all this. I can't be writing a treatise to explain what I
think should be obvious. I said that all that experience gives us is
necessity. That is all consistent with what I just said.
[...]
> >> The 'generalities' in question are supposed to apply to every
> >> particular, that's why they are universals and not merely general.
> ..
> >Sez you in all your rationalistic fervor, and not exactly responsive
> >to what I said. Concepts carry the benefit of unit-economy while also
> >carrying with them implicit reference to the normal as it applies to
> >categorized units. You have this notion that concepts are just
> >supposed to ignore such contextual considerations. The context for
> >the concept "man" includes the recognition that "has two eyes" states
> >a normalcy about things in the class, so that we make sense of "man
> >has two eyes." That's it. You wanna throw in more complicated things
> >to try and validate unwarranted divisions. Sorry, but concepts serve
> >a specific cognitive function, and they don't fit into your
> >rationalistic model of what they're supposed to do. There are no
> >intrinsic universals so you're gonna be out of luck on that count.
>
> I never said there were intrinsic universals, only that, in the
> definition of man, rationality and animality must be considered its
> only universals,
I can hardly believe that an otherwise dedicated and hardcore
philosopher could be so goddamned sloppy. It's like you read through
all of ITOE, AvS, OPAR, and gleaned not a single goddamned thing.
Even granting for the moment that "universals" is the term we want to
be using here, "rationality" and "animality" subsume a whole bunch of
other universals. There is a ton of information contained in these
concepts that could be drawn out through an analysis into all their
constituent component concepts. You seemed to have at least the
faintest glimpse that this is what is going on above when Rand
discusses furniture.
Peikoff used an example once from his lectures that was most
poignant. We know that Rand refers to life as "a process of self-
sustaining, self-generating action." Contra all the impulses of the
armchair philosophers, Peikoff made the most striking observation:
"You've never seen a process of self-sustaining, self-generated action
walking down the street," as if a process were free-floating and we
could talk about it while dropping the whole context that gave rise to
our recognition of a process. It's a fucking marvel that all these
armchair philosophers can be so cavalier in how they treat the map and
the territory.
How on earth can you be so sloppy as to treat rationality and
animality as free-floating univerals, so totally and completely devoid
of the context that gave rise to them?
> whereas "possessing two eyes" cannot be considered a
> universal to any definition of man. This isn't complicated, it only
> becomes complicated when someone has to gyrate like a belly-dancing
> hippo in order to invalidate valid concepts.
It would seem that way, to someone sloppy like you. I reiterate that
there is a whole cognitive context that gives rise to concepts, and
part of that context is an implicit grasp of the normal case as it
applies to a classified group of entities.
> Analytical propositions do ignore contextual considerations, that is
> their function.
It's revealing that you use the term "ignore." Rand used a certain
term, like in what we do when we form a concept and how we mentally
treat the specific measurements of the units subsumed under the
concept when we perform the integration.
When a neo-Aristotelian like me sees the term "ice," for example, we
don't understand that term in terms of other terms. We understand it
by envisioning what a specific instance of ice would be like, which is
indeed to envision a specific piece of ice with specific dimensions
placed in specific environments. The thinking is all quite concrete
and particular, even when the understanding is that whatever we think
about this particular envisioned piece of ice is true for any other
piece of ice. And we know that, given how we arrived at a conceptual
understanding of the term "ice," that there are things that this
envisioned piece of ice would *have* to do under whatever conditions,
else it's not ice that's under consideration.
I pounded that point home time and time again to Kolker when he
started talking about cows flying to the moon and back unaided. And,
for all his empty context-dropping Humean bluster, Kolker NEVER
answered by completely sound point, because he doesn't have an answer
to it.
Now here you come, someone who isn't supposed to be anywhere near as
sloppy as Kolker on philosophical issues, and say that we're stripping
away all the context and considering only the universals and whatever
we can infer only from the meaning of the universal. So we get this
ridiculous absurdity that we can't infer from the meaning of
"rationality" and "animality" alone that man is incapable of unaided
flight to the moon and back.
This is what happens when you start doing free-floating analysis and
ignore the context, as you put it, rather than recognizing that how we
got to an understanding of definitional meaning was only by a process
of mental isolation of certain things that rest upon a whole mountain
of context.
> They are what is left over when one has "boiled away"
> all context and conditions surrounding the subject of an analytical
> statement.
Yeah, and that's how you end up with your sloppy-ass statement that we
need a synthesis to get "floats on liquid water" but not "is the the
solid form of water" and that one states a conceptual necessity and
the other doesn't.
I do realize it would be a major upheaval for you to have to go all
the way back to the drawing board and fix your broken
presuppositions. I realize it's not easy. Didn't happen for me until
some 10 years into my philosophical life but it did get me to see how
inadequately and rationalistically I had approached a good number of
topics in philosophy. Maybe you can check out my published journal
article for an example of the distilled essence of the correct
approach to a particular subject that has so many people who don't
think properly so confused. You might like it; it has some stuff that
you wish Kant could say if the context he was in didn't make him
flounder so badly. No square pegs that have to be fit into round
holes, no empty and needless divisions. It's the kind of drawing-
board Aristotle had to go back to when he tried to square his
understanding of Plato with his understanding of reality. It's not
easy and it doesn't happen overnight, I know.
> There is no such concept, by the way, as "normalcy about things in a
> class."
Wow, that's an impressive argument. I provide a statement explaining
how there is legitimacy to such an idea, and your response is just to
say "nuh-uh"?
> >> Your analysis there begs the question of "similarity" and what makes
> >> it a possible experience. We cannot know similarity without some
> >> general a priori notions to begin from.
>
> >Sez you. You're nuts. Similarity is very bedrock fundamental stuff
> >to the most basic buildings blocks of sense experience, and it's there
> >for us to recognize and grasp, ostensively.
>
> "Similarity" is the bedrock for you only because Rand failed to take
> her argument any deeper, but that is the only reason. If Rand truly
> wanted to discuss epistemology, not concept-formation (thus
> erroneously assuming, as a package-deal, that "knowledge" and
> "concept" are the same thing), she should have begun by analyzing how
> knowledge of similarity is possible.
You're nuts. Philosophically speaking, there is no issue here, as
much as you wish there were one. Our knowledge of such is all
ostensive, automated, perceptual and physiological. It's all a given
for purposes of epistemology. And of course she was discussing
epistemology; epistemology is nothing more than the discipline of
discovering and formulating correct principles for thinking. I
realize that's too down-to-earth and practical for you, but the
discipline is real and serves a vital function. You have it is as
your unwarranted and preconceived notion that it has to be more meta-
level than that. And why? Just because Hume failed?
> >> At any rate, it remains the case that to say something "normal" about
> >> a PARTICULAR being in question is to make a synthetic proposition,
> >> since "normalcy" is not included in any judgment about the nature of a
> >> PARTICULAR being.
>
> >Hmmm. I'm gonna have to take some extra time to parse that one.
>
> For example, "Man is normally a rational being," vs. "That man is
> normally a rational being."
So what's your point, now? Aside from your apparent failure to grasp
my point about normalcy, what does this have to do with your phony
division between analytic and synthetic statements?
Chris Cathcart
BTW:
> If Rand truly
> wanted to discuss epistemology, not concept-formation (thus
> erroneously assuming, as a package-deal, that "knowledge" and
> "concept" are the same thing),
It's unbelievable that someone purported to be as careful a thinker as
you purport to be, could be this dreadfully sloppy. Evidently you
missed the memo from OPAR that "concept-formation" took up one chapter
and that the rest of epistemology took up a couple more. Apparently
it went completely over your head that Rand was writing an
*introduction* to Objectivist epistemology with specific focus on the
the building blocks of knowledge and how those building blocks can
receive a formal justificatory treatment. Yes, epistemology is about
knowledge, and central and crucial to epistemology is justification.
Apparently you missed all that stuff about context, hierarchy,
integration and reduction. Hume's skepticist pseudo-problem is easily
dispensed with early on in all this, so that we can get to the meat of
things.
It's funny that you even treat the Kantian edifice as having to do
with epistemology, when in fact it has to do with a whole metaphysics
-- namely his whole theory as to how the world of experience is
subjectively constituted. About the only thing he did and contributed
of value epistemologically speaking is his showing that we're
unwarranted in applying our concepts to notions over and above the
realm of the sensible. It's unfortunate that this "over and above the
sensible" had even the slightest bit of philosophical and metaphysical
importance for him (and which wouldn't have been an issue at all if he
didn't do all his bullshit about experience being subjectively
constituted), but at least he put the Rationalists in their place on
one count. But in the arena of epistemology proper, he never went
beyond Hume. As soon as he concedes to Hume that experience won't
give us necessity, the rest of the whole first half of the Critique is
all just wank. You want the whole hippo doing the gyrations and all
of it resting on nothing and proving nothing? First half of the
Critique.
Robert J. Kolker
>
> Now here you come, someone who isn't supposed to be anywhere near as
> sloppy as Kolker on philosophical issues, and say that we're stripping
> away all the context and considering only the universals and whatever
> we can infer only from the meaning of the universal. So we get this
> ridiculous absurdity that we can't infer from the meaning of
> "rationality" and "animality" alone that man is incapable of unaided
> flight to the moon and back.
>
I am not sloppy on philosohical issues. I reject most of philosophy
(with the exception of some empirically based epistemological systems).
Philosophy, for the most part, is nonsense and especially metaphysics.
Being philosophical, by and large, is as useful as studying ectoplasm.
On the other hand I am not sloppy in matters of physical science and
mathematics which are far more important than philosophical studies
which still muck about with the same problems as three thousand years
ago. Could it be because the "problems" that philosphy studies are
bogus? Has that possibility occurred to you?
Any metaphysics beyong Reality Lite is wretched excess and a waste of time.
Reality Lite:
1. There is an Out There out there that we did not make up in our heads.
2. We have sufficient biological equipment (by way of evolution) to
comprehend enough of what is Out There to survive.
Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
<cath...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here is the post where I make Chris Cathcart eat his own words, just
as I made Kolker eat his own algorithm two days ago.
>On May 23, 11:35 pm, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> You are now circling back to the beginning, but only elucidating the
>> meaning of the original truism "ice floats on water," drawing out what
>> makes it true in order to give it the appearance of a different idea.
>> I don't see anything counterfactual against me about this. It is ice,
>> therefore it would float on water, necessarily; or, ice necessarily
>> floats on water; or, ice floats on water. All of these statements
>> contain identical ideas about ice. And none of it detracts from my
>> denial that "ice floating on liquid water is necessary for ice to be
>> ice." It is not necessary for ice to do anything, ice is just ice.
>> That is a tautology, and only as analytical as saying "ice is just a
>> solid form of water."
>
>But see, this is where you're wrong. Given whatever conditions, it is
>necessary for ice to do specific things. Do you mean to say that
>introducing the conditions somehow detracts from the necessity? But
>that's your *assumption*, which I am challenging as unfounded.
We should have this worked out by now, after dancing around and
around with you about the distinction between the generalities and
particulars of ice and other questions that needed to be straightened
out.
I agreewith you in that, under whatever conditions, ice must of
necessity, which means, by its very nature, do specific things. But
that's in reference to its a priori necessity, not analyticity. What I
am saying is distinct from that. The statement "Ice is necessarily
ice" or "ice is necessarily a solid form of water" is analytical. The
statement 'ice will necessarily float on water' is synthetic, that is,
synthetic a priori, since 'floating' is not included among the
constituent concepts of "ice." It is not necessary to its concept
that any ice be floating on water in order for it to be considered
ice. It is necessary in forming its concept that ice be a solid formed
by subjecting water to sufficiently cold temperatures.
Rand's idea about constituent concepts, which I mentioned in my last
post here, was at the last particularly helpful in this.
>> That's not the way to answer me, which is, we might know that ice
>> would float on liquid water prior to the first discovery of the fact
>> simply by using inference. But either way, the resulting statement of
>> fact is synthetic, since "floats on water" is not analytical to the
>> concept "ice" even if it is the nature of ice to float on water. It is
>> not necessary for ice to float on water in order to *be* ice. But it
>> is necessary for ice to be a solid form of water in order to be ice.
>
>I don't think you know how ridiculous you sound, because I don't think
>you'd be saying this if you did. You say that it is not necessary for
>ice to float on water in order for it to be ice. But if it didn't
>float on water, it wouldn't be ice. If you mean to say that you
>needn't actually put a piece of ice onto liquid water in order for
>that piece of ice to be a piece of ice, then that's true but it's not
>saying anything and only gums up the works in any useful discussion
>about necessity. We're talking about necessity here, in the specific
>sense in which it is discussed by Hume and Kant and Rand. Not some
>other sense of necessity that has no bearing here.
You're talking about necessity, but since the original discussion
concerned analyticity vs. syntheticity isn't it just a red herring? It
is therefore the concern with 'necessity' that is gumming up the works
and distracting from the issue here. That's not to say it doesn't
apply to the issue, but it must apply in a very specific way which I
just mentioned above.
Kant brought epistemic clarity to an understanding that was already
broken long before he arrived on the scene. The distinction was
historically helpful in that previous philosophers mistakenly held
certain synthetic ideas to be analytical, that is, tautological,
although of course without putting it in those terms. One of Kant's
goals was to bring more precision to the philosophy by elucidating
some of the concepts that go into constructing the very discussion
on an epistemic level.
Critique is a meta-discussion about how philosophers go about doing
philosophy, and so his idea was to draw out and elucidate those
concepts implicit to the very discussion itself.
You say that drawing out the tautological, analytical side of the
concept is not very informative about concepts such as "ice." But that
misses the whole point of doing this, which is to add clarity to
philosophical discussion in order to avoid conflating analytic and
synthetic propositions.
And so Kant determined that propositions philosophers had formerly
held to be analytical, such as those of arithmetic, are actually
synthetic. This is a very useful distinction to make, not to the way
people do arithmetic, or to the way people talk about ice; it changed,
or attempted to change, the way philosophy itself should be done.
For a very important example, which I mentioned to Kolker recently,
Euclidean geometry was held, in Kant's day and for 2000 years
previously, to be, implicitly at least, analytical a priori. This
means that it was considered *The very nature of Geometry ITSELF"
to be Euclidean, forever and ever, just as it is necessary for ice to
always be a solid form of water. If, however, most of the propositions
of math, including geometry, are synthetic, then you can negate those
propositions without contradicting the very concept of geometry. With
regard to the idea of syntheticity, it is therefore not necessary, not
analytically so, that geometrical truths be limited to Euclid's.
It is now, thanks to the synthetic a priori, not necessarily the case
that Geometry = Euclid. Geometry can be any number of types without
self-contradiction, that is, without contradicting the nature of
geometry itself. And all the propositions, except for the obviously
tautological ones governing geometry itself regardess of any of its
particular forms (e.g., law of identity), are considered synthetic a
priori.
>> A synthesis requires two or more distinct concepts. But "ice" and
>> "solid form of water" are one and the same concept,
>
>This is just sloppy. "Ice" as a concept subsumes a number of
>different informative things that you can say about it. Since a
>concept covers all past, present and future instances, it subsumes
>counterfactuals -- any piece of ice that we put onto liquid water at
>some point in the future is going to float.
>
>How could you have devoted this many years to hardcore philosophical
>study and be this sloppy?
If you think that's sloppy, you should see my desk.
> so no synthesis of
>> the two is necessary in forming the proposition, only an analysis of
>> what ice is, that is to say, the constituent concepts of "ice." And of
>> course there is such a thing, according to Rand, as constituent
>> concepts: 'The meaning of "furniture" cannot be grasped unless one
>> has first grasped the meaning of its constituent concepts.' (ITOE, 22)
>> So if you, as did Rand, analyze the concept "furniture," you come up
>> with its constituent concepts: "Movable man-made objects intended to
>> be used in a human habitation, which can support the weight of the
>> human body or support and/or store other, smaller objects." The fact
>> that furniture floats on water has nothing to do with Rand's analysis
>> of this concept, and indeed, hers is an analytic proposition.
>
>I haven't much of an idea what you're getting at here. The only stuff
>that makes sense is the stuff you quoted from Rand. And now you're
>onto "furniture floats on water." Try and be less sloppy, hmmmm?
I'll clean my sloppy desk when you clean yours.
>> >What's with this primitive mentality that without some metaphysical
>> >glue tying everything together, we're out of luck on the whole
>> >necessity thing? Hume assumed there needed to be glue, but that of
>> >course we didn't experience the glue, so there's no basis for
>> >believing necessity. Kant came up with this whole elaborate story
>> >that the glue can be supplied by us so that we're ensured of having
>> >it, but only as it applies to constituted-experience. It's a total
>> >cluster-fuck. You just can't handle the simple idea that things have
>> >natures on their own and behave accordingly, can you.
>>
>> I'm sure things do have a nature of their own, but in this case we're
>> talking about the nature of two kinds of mutually exclusive and
>> exhaustive propositions, the analytic and the synthetic, so the former
>> would have to be a topic for another thread.
>
>There are two kinds of mutually exclusive propositions -- ones that
>state the definition of a concept, and ones that don't. You and Hume
>and Kant think that there's something of profound philosophical
>relevance to the distinction.
I not so sure about Hume, since he didn't come up with the
distinction, but I hope you found my explanation above to be
informative at least.
>> >> As for your attempt to boil this down to one kind of proposition, you
>> >> can say that all propositions are absolute. But only to the extent
>> >> that analytic propositions are absolute absent any further criteria.
>> >> For example, "ice is a solid form of water" is a sufficient and
>> >> necessary statement describing what ice is. But to say that ice floats
>> >> on water does not tell you anything that distinguishes ice from other
>> >> substances that float on water. The statement is only an addendum to
>> >> your knowledge of ice, an amplification upon what you already know ice
>> >> to be.
>> ..
>> >It's necessary to the nature of ice that it float on water, just like
>> >it's necessary to the nature of some other things that they float on
>> >water. So what? It's still just as much inherent to ice's nature as
>> >its molecular structure is.
>>
>> I am not talking about what is inherent to the nature of ice, only
>> what is inherent to the nature of our propositions regarding ice.
>
>I only with that were so, but it's you and Hume and Kant that derive
>something of profound philosophical relevance from what should be an
>otherwise unimportant observation about our propositions. You and
>Hume and Kant all agree that we derive from this that necessity is not
>to be found in experience, for instance.
I hope you're now convinced that, at least for geometry, the
distinction is an important one.
>Speak of the devil:
>
>> >> That's because Hume was right in that there is no necessity in
>> >> experience.
>> ..
>> >Well, Hume is just wrong about that. He wasn't approaching this whole
>> >subject in the right way. All that experience *ever* gives us, is
>> >necessity. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Kantian.
>>
>> "Some facts are not necessary, but all truths are." (OPAR, 111) Are
>> you saying that experience only gives truths?
>
>Actually, Peikoff is mistaken about this point, even if the context of
>the statement (which you didn't specify) is regarding man-made facts.
>(It's ITOE, by the way, not OPAR.)
I don't know where I got the OPAR from. And yes the context regarded
metaphysically given versus man-made facts, where the man-made ones
were not necessarily given. Experience also gives man-made facts
which, according to Peikoff, are not necessarily so as you claimed.
> Peikoff is indeed trying to get at
>a correct point as it relates to man-made facts, but he just didn't
>state it right. A fact, once it is actualized as a fact (and there is
>no other way for a fact to be than actual), is necessary. I think in
>making such a statement, he undercuts his case. He used the example
>of the number of states in the United States; he was making the
>distinction between facts that had to be so, and those that didn't
>have to be so, the relevant distinguishing factor being human
>freedom. But from there he slips. The fact that there are 50 states
>*is* necessary now that there are 50 states. Which is to say that it
>can't be otherwise that right now, there are 50 states. Peikoff's
>discussion is best applied to facts that will be actualized *in the
>future*. It's not necessary that 50 years from now, there will be 50
>states. Which is to say, that the number of states in the future is
>not necesitated by all its antecedent conditions. Peikoff's only
>point is about what had to be so, and what didn't have to be so; I
>think it unfortunate that he had to bring in the term "necessity" the
>way he did to explain this point.
And so I'M the sloppy thinker?
>Now, it's up to *you* to figure out, non-sloppily, what is and is not
>implied in all this. I can't be writing a treatise to explain what I
>think should be obvious. I said that all that experience gives us is
>necessity. That is all consistent with what I just said.
Why did you switch the discussion to being about "necessity"?
>[...]
>> >> The 'generalities' in question are supposed to apply to every
>> >> particular, that's why they are universals and not merely general.
>> ..
>> >Sez you in all your rationalistic fervor, and not exactly responsive
>> >to what I said. Concepts carry the benefit of unit-economy while also
>> >carrying with them implicit reference to the normal as it applies to
>> >categorized units. You have this notion that concepts are just
>> >supposed to ignore such contextual considerations. The context for
>> >the concept "man" includes the recognition that "has two eyes" states
>> >a normalcy about things in the class, so that we make sense of "man
>> >has two eyes." That's it. You wanna throw in more complicated things
>> >to try and validate unwarranted divisions. Sorry, but concepts serve
>> >a specific cognitive function, and they don't fit into your
>> >rationalistic model of what they're supposed to do. There are no
>> >intrinsic universals so you're gonna be out of luck on that count.
>>
>> I never said there were intrinsic universals, only that, in the
>> definition of man, rationality and animality must be considered its
>> only universals,
>
>I can hardly believe that an otherwise dedicated and hardcore
>philosopher could be so goddamned sloppy. It's like you read through
>all of ITOE, AvS, OPAR, and gleaned not a single goddamned thing.
I gleaned a few laughs from it. Does that count?
>Even granting for the moment that "universals" is the term we want to
>be using here, "rationality" and "animality" subsume a whole bunch of
>other universals. There is a ton of information contained in these
>concepts that could be drawn out through an analysis into all their
>constituent component concepts. You seemed to have at least the
>faintest glimpse that this is what is going on above when Rand
>discusses furniture.
You have just used the very distinction that you have been
pooh-poohing for a few days now. "There is a ton of information
contained in these concepts that could be drawn out through an
analysis into all their constituent component concepts." But as usual,
you had to disagree with me in ORDER to agree with me.
>Peikoff used an example once from his lectures that was most
>poignant. We know that Rand refers to life as "a process of self-
>sustaining, self-generating action." Contra all the impulses of the
>armchair philosophers, Peikoff made the most striking observation:
>"You've never seen a process of self-sustaining, self-generated action
>walking down the street," as if a process were free-floating and we
>could talk about it while dropping the whole context that gave rise to
>our recognition of a process. It's a fucking marvel that all these
>armchair philosophers can be so cavalier in how they treat the map and
>the territory.
>
>How on earth can you be so sloppy as to treat rationality and
>animality as free-floating univerals, so totally and completely devoid
>of the context that gave rise to them?
How can you be so sloppy as to denigrate a distinction for day after
day and then suddenly use it to support your own argument?
All you have to do is consider what you just wrote - "There is a ton
of information contained in these concepts that could be drawn out
through an analysis into all their constituent component concepts" -
and draw your own conclusion about the distinction you just implied
between analyzing into constituent concepts and all those other
"informative" things you can say about a concept, such as "ice floats
on water."
I'll snip the rest of your response which only concerns how "sloppy"
and how "nuts" I am. (Hehe.)
Malrassic Park
<cath...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>On May 23, 11:35 pm, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>BTW:
>
>> If Rand truly
>> wanted to discuss epistemology, not concept-formation (thus
>> erroneously assuming, as a package-deal, that "knowledge" and
>> "concept" are the same thing),
>
>It's unbelievable that someone purported to be as careful a thinker as
>you purport to be, could be this dreadfully sloppy.
Now show everybody the evidence of how I purported to be a careful
thinker, and then tell us more about the hippo, the gyrations, and
"all of it resting on nothing and proving nothing."
Chris Cathcart
> On Sun, 25 May 2008 00:15:24 -0700, Chris Cathcart
>
>
> >On May 23, 11:35 pm, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >BTW:
>
> >> If Rand truly
> >> wanted to discuss epistemology, not concept-formation (thus
> >> erroneously assuming, as a package-deal, that "knowledge" and
> >> "concept" are the same thing),
>
> >It's unbelievable that someone purported to be as careful a thinker as
> >you purport to be, could be this dreadfully sloppy.
>
> Now show everybody the evidence of how I purported to be a careful
> thinker,
All your postings over the last several years where you meticulously
explain all that Kantian stuff in excruciating detail.
Anyway, you were dreadfully sloppy in your previous posting, and
nothing in your response challenges that assessment.
> and then tell us more about the hippo, the gyrations, and
> "all of it resting on nothing and proving nothing."
Sure. When Kant denies from the outset that we can get necessity from
experience, his whole project to ground necessity doesn't end up
proving anything because obviously he's grounding it wrong.
Duh.
n
n
n
n
n
n
n
Chris Cathcart
> On Sat, 24 May 2008 23:42:29 -0700, Chris Cathcart
>
For someone who says that he's going to set out to make me eat my
words, he's mighty sloppy right out of the starting gate.
Evidently you never gave much careful and serious thought to what it
is for a concept and its constituent concepts contain. You're still
all in this mindset, which you adopted unquestioningly from Hume and
Kant, that if it's not contained in the *definition,* then it's not
contained in constituent *concepts.* I mean, shit, that's hardly even
a subtle screw-up; this was an issue that you could have grasped on a
first reading of ITOE and Peikoff's essay.
A concept contains a vast amount of information; its constituent
concepts contain a vast amount of information. "Floating" is sure as
hell included in that set of information, properly conceptualized and
understood to mean that any piece of ice put on liquid water is going
to float.
If your whole thing is about what's specified in the definition and
what isn't, then you have a point, but not one of much philosophical
importance if you haven't bought unquestioningly into a Humean/Kantian
paradigm.
> It is not necessary to its concept
> that any ice be floating on water in order for it to be considered
> ice.
You're just confusing things as to what it is when we conceptualize
something. Conceptualization, properly, is anchored unrelentingly in
sensory experience. It just doesn't all of a sudden drop what
experience gives us and all of a sudden take on a whole new world of
its own. That's rationalism. Contained in the *concept* of ice is
reference to the experiences we had where we observed numerous
instances of ice floating on water.
All you're saying is that it isn't necessary for some particular piece
of ice to be floating on water in order for that piece of ice to be
ice. If that's all you were saying, there'd be no problem. But then
you start bringing in discussion about the concept of ice that
introduces confusion about the map and the territory.
Consider yourself schooled on this point. You're welcome.
> It is necessary in forming its concept that ice be a solid formed
> by subjecting water to sufficiently cold temperatures.
Wonderful, wonderful example of mixing up map and territory. Just
start out talking about what is necessary for forming a concept of
ice, and then slide right on over to talking about what we do to get
ice. Absolutely fucking marvelous that you make your confusions so
obvious.
Whoa boy. You've got some real re-thinking to do. I haven't even
started on reading the rest of your post; your fuckup was already too
big to begin with and needs serious working-on all by itself. I'm a
bit surprised, even, that you could come off as such an amateur on
such a crucially central and basic topic of philosophy.
Chris Cathcart
> All you have to do is consider what you just wrote - "There is a ton
> of information contained in these concepts that could be drawn out
> through an analysis into all their constituent component concepts" -
> and draw your own conclusion about the distinction you just implied
> between analyzing into constituent concepts and all those other
> "informative" things you can say about a concept, such as "ice floats
> on water."
No, you're the one with the obvious implication staring you right in
the face: that drawing out all the information through an analysis of
all the constituent concepts *is* the process of drawing out all those
informative things.
Good god, you can't be that dense. Can you?
Malrassic Park
This wasn't the point at which I made you eat your own words.
>Evidently you never gave much careful and serious thought to what it
>is for a concept and its constituent concepts contain. You're still
>all in this mindset, which you adopted unquestioningly from Hume and
>Kant, that if it's not contained in the *definition,* then it's not
>contained in constituent *concepts.* I mean, shit, that's hardly even
>a subtle screw-up; this was an issue that you could have grasped on a
>first reading of ITOE and Peikoff's essay.
>
>A concept contains a vast amount of information; its constituent
>concepts contain a vast amount of information. "Floating" is sure as
>hell included in that set of information, properly conceptualized and
>understood to mean that any piece of ice put on liquid water is going
>to float.
I never said that the definition is the only source of constituent
concepts, and besides, I am only going along with Rand on this:
'Observe also that the concept "furniture" involves a relationship to
another concept which is not one of its constituent units, but which
has to be grasped before one can grasp the meaning of "furniture": the
concept "habitation".' (itoe 22-23)
'Observe that the concept "furniture" is an abstraction one step
further removed from perceptual reality than any of its constituent
concepts. "Table" is an abstraction, since it designates any table,
but its meaning can be conveyed simply by pointing to one or two
perceptual objects.' (itoe 22)
Notice that Rand used the phrases "constituent unit" and "constituent
concepts" interchangably. You can easily see from Rand's example that
"table" is a constituent concept of "furniture," and by this she means
"constituent unit." Only in this example she is demonstrating how an
abstraction (furniture) is formed from an abstraction (table).
So "constituent unit" and "constituent concept" are synonymously used,
but their usage depends on the context of the discussion. And in the
case of the concept "furniture" it does not include the idea of
"habitation," despite the fact that the idea of "habitation" must be
understood before grasping the meaning of "furniture." (itoe 23)
And so obviously "floating" sure as hell isn't a constituent concept
of "ice," any more than "habitation" is a constituent concept of
"furniture" despite the fact that the concept "habitation" has to be
grasped, according to Rand, before one can grasp the meaning of
"furniture."
I mean, shit, that's hardly even a subtle screw-up; this was an issue
that you could have grasped on a first reading of ITOE and Peikoff's
essay.
>If your whole thing is about what's specified in the definition and
>what isn't, then you have a point, but not one of much philosophical
>importance if you haven't bought unquestioningly into a Humean/Kantian
>paradigm.
>
>> It is not necessary to its concept
>> that any ice be floating on water in order for it to be considered
>> ice.
>
>You're just confusing things as to what it is when we conceptualize
>something. Conceptualization, properly, is anchored unrelentingly in
>sensory experience. It just doesn't all of a sudden drop what
>experience gives us and all of a sudden take on a whole new world of
>its own. That's rationalism. Contained in the *concept* of ice is
>reference to the experiences we had where we observed numerous
>instances of ice floating on water.
Some of which are constituent concepts, some of which aren't. For
instance, it is first necessary to observe that all these units
designated by the concept "furniture" are to be used within a human
habitation. So the concept "habitation" must be grasped first.
However, the concept "habitation" does not therefore constitute one
of the constituent concepts of "furniture." That would only included
items of furniture. Furthermore, the units of the concept "furniture"
must be differentiated from other units existing within a habitation,
such as 'doors or windows, from ornamental objects, such as pictures
or drapes, and from a variety of smaller objects that may be used
inside a habitation, such as ashtrays, bric-a-brac, dishes, etc.',
(itoe 22) and they form no part of the concept "furniture" despite the
fact that on numerous occasions you have observed all these items,
furniture and otherwise, within human habitations. For example, you
may have observed an ashtray sitting on a table, but that does not
mean that "sitting on a table" is a constituent concept of "ashtray,"
or, in general, that simply experiencing, on numerous occasions, a
relationship between the two means that one is a constituent concept
of the other.
That was very sloppy thinking on your part.
>All you're saying is that it isn't necessary for some particular piece
>of ice to be floating on water in order for that piece of ice to be
>ice. If that's all you were saying, there'd be no problem.
That's all I'm saying. This isn't rocket science.
>But then you start bringing in discussion about the concept of ice that
>introduces confusion about the map and the territory.
>
>Consider yourself schooled on this point. You're welcome.
It gave me an opportunity to re-read the Rand text and find textual
support for my own view inside your own intellectual territory. So
thank you.
>> It is necessary in forming its concept that ice be a solid formed
>> by subjecting water to sufficiently cold temperatures.
>
>Wonderful, wonderful example of mixing up map and territory. Just
>start out talking about what is necessary for forming a concept of
>ice, and then slide right on over to talking about what we do to get
>ice. Absolutely fucking marvelous that you make your confusions so
>obvious.
It is simply one of those numerous experiences you yourself mentioned
in this post: "Contained in the *concept* of ice is reference to the
experiences we had where we observed numerous instances of ice
floating on water." And, mutatis mutandis, contained in the *concept*
of ice is reference to the experiences we had where we observed the
manner in which ice was formed.
>Whoa boy. You've got some real re-thinking to do. I haven't even
>started on reading the rest of your post; your fuckup was already too
>big to begin with and needs serious working-on all by itself. I'm a
>bit surprised, even, that you could come off as such an amateur on
>such a crucially central and basic topic of philosophy.
How I enjoy making you eat your own words.
Malrassic Park
<cath...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On May 25, 7:56 am, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
..
>> All you have to do is consider what you just wrote - "There is a ton
>> of information contained in these concepts that could be drawn out
>> through an analysis into all their constituent component concepts" -
>> and draw your own conclusion about the distinction you just implied
>> between analyzing into constituent concepts and all those other
>> "informative" things you can say about a concept, such as "ice floats
>> on water."
..
>No, you're the one with the obvious implication staring you right in
>the face: that drawing out all the information through an analysis of
>all the constituent concepts *is* the process of drawing out all those
>informative things.
..
>Good god, you can't be that dense. Can you?
Can you be so dense as to fail to see that I am making you eat your
own words time and time again?
Malrassic Park
<cath...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On May 25, 8:16 am, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 25 May 2008 00:15:24 -0700, Chris Cathcart
..
>> <cathc...@gmail.com> wrote:
..
>> >On May 23, 11:35 pm, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
..
>> >BTW:
..
>> >> If Rand truly
>> >> wanted to discuss epistemology, not concept-formation (thus
>> >> erroneously assuming, as a package-deal, that "knowledge" and
>> >> "concept" are the same thing),
..
>> >It's unbelievable that someone purported to be as careful a thinker as
>> >you purport to be, could be this dreadfully sloppy.
..
>> Now show everybody the evidence of how I purported to be a careful
>> thinker,
..
>All your postings over the last several years where you meticulously
>explain all that Kantian stuff in excruciating detail.
I'm sorry I disappointed you in my most recent attempts at it. I just
can't seem to win with you people, stylistically or otherwise.
>Anyway, you were dreadfully sloppy in your previous posting, and
>nothing in your response challenges that assessment.
Maybe I was trying to think down to your own sloppy level.
>> and then tell us more about the hippo, the gyrations, and
>> "all of it resting on nothing and proving nothing."
..
>Sure. When Kant denies from the outset that we can get necessity from
>experience, his whole project to ground necessity doesn't end up
>proving anything because obviously he's grounding it wrong.
Who do you believe more nowadays on Kant, George Walsh, or Rand and
Peikoff?
Chris Cathcart
Mr. Park, here's what I'm saying when I say that by conceptual
necessity we learn all kinds of things about ice, including that it
floats on water: The concept of a thing references all kinds of
information in an open-ended way. If we were to analyze a concept, we
would be mentally breaking it up into other concepts necessarily
related to it. We analyze "ice" -- we begin with a basic conceptual
truth as it applies to ice, summarized in a definition -- and we see
that the concepts used in the definition lead us to other concepts,
and so on and so forth. This is how we are able to cognize and
recognize that if we were analyzing the concept and it didn't lead in
the chain of analysis to a conceptual truth that any referent would
float on liquid water, then the concept under consideration is not
that of ice.
I've already pointed out that there are things stated in the
definition alone, and things that are not stated in the definition
alone but are nevertheless necessarily related in our understanding to
the concept via a chain of analysis. This is why I keep saying that
the only useful distinction you've established is "definitional vs.
non-definitional," since "floats on liquid water" and "is the solid
form of water" are both necessarily related in our understanding to
our concept of ice. We can't cognize "ice" and "does not float on
liquid water" without a contradiction somewhere in our conceptual
scheme. That's why "floats on liquid water" is not "adding something
not already contained in the concept."
I reiterate, our concepts are *open-ended* -- that is to say, over
time, as our learning expands, we can mentally add things to our
concept of something that were not contained in our concept of it *as
we held that concept previously*. This preserves previous conceptual
necessity as well as expands our knowledge of what is related *of
necessity* to our concept.
In your Kantian scheme, it's via expansion upon the original concept,
what you call an act of synthesis, that's the source of any new
conceptual necessity, and you dub this a necessity in virtue of a
"synthetic apriori." I submit that this has it all bass-ackwards.
What happens is that we *expand our conceptual knowledge of a thing*
in an open-ended fashion, and that what we are doing is not in any
way, shape or form generating necessity in this process; we are
*discovering,* *recognizing* or *identifying* necessity that was
already there.
For some reason in the course of this discussion you are trying to
separate the matter of necessity and contingency from the matter of
analyticity and syntheticity. And I am saying that this begs the
question, given the way that you and Kant take Hume for granted that
there is no necessity to be had from experience alone and that it's
via an act of synthesis that necessity is possible. Clearly these
issues are connected, and I'm breaking down where your presuppositions
and errors lie in your discussion of analysis and synthesis, in light
of your assumption that necessity isn't to be had from experience.
I say this in lieu of doing an analysis of what Rand and/or I mean by
the term "constituent concept" or "component concept" based on the
quotes from ITOE you provided. There are thought-provoking matters
there that I need to think over further, but which nonetheless do not
affect my argument above. (For instance, you don't define "furniture"
in terms of "table" -- it's the other way around -- but it strikes me
as odd, then, to say that "table" is a constituent or component
concept of "furniture" rather than the other way around. This is
possibly to say that Rand made her point in the opposite fashion than
what she had most sensibly intended, and which a normal reading of her
intentions would have taken away from her prose. But I'm going to
have to consider this one some more. Again, it does not affect the
point I made above; if applied to tables, by breaking down the concept
of table, you will end up with things necessarily related to the
concept that weren't *explicitly* stated in the definition.)
We do, in any case, get this following error:
> Some of which are constituent concepts, some of which aren't. For
> instance, it is first necessary to observe that all these units
> designated by the concept "furniture" are to be used within a human
> habitation. So the concept "habitation" must be grasped first.
> However, the concept "habitation" does not therefore constitute one
> of the constituent concepts of "furniture." That would only included
> items of furniture.
It's a non-sequitur to go from the first statement about how we must
first understand the meaning of something, to your second statement
concerning their relationship in a conceptual hierarchy. In any
event, the concept "habituation" is of necessity related to the
concept "furniture," and analyzing our concept of furniture leads us
to the concept of "habituation." To my understanding, I think that's
a straightforward reading of the term "constituent concepts," whatever
Rand said. I can't make any sense of your statement that constituent
concepts of "furniture" would only include items of furniture. That
sounds like constituent *units* of the concept of furniture, and
further, that since it's concepts that are the units of higher-level
concepts, the constituent units of the concept of furniture -- again,
a concept that's open-ended to be able to take on new examples -- are
concepts of, e.g., tables, chairs, sofas.
Not that I'm clear on where you think this is going with respect to
analysis, synthesis, and necessity.
> Furthermore, the units of the concept "furniture"
> must be differentiated from other units existing within a habitation,
> such as 'doors or windows, from ornamental objects, such as pictures
> or drapes, and from a variety of smaller objects that may be used
> inside a habitation, such as ashtrays, bric-a-brac, dishes, etc.',
> (itoe 22) and they form no part of the concept "furniture" despite the
> fact that on numerous occasions you have observed all these items,
> furniture and otherwise, within human habitations. For example, you
> may have observed an ashtray sitting on a table, but that does not
> mean that "sitting on a table" is a constituent concept of "ashtray,"
> or, in general, that simply experiencing, on numerous occasions, a
> relationship between the two means that one is a constituent concept
> of the other.
The other things in a human habituation are not grouped under the
concept "furniture" and yet, like furniture, also understood in terms
of "habituation." The rest is a matter of cross-classification. But
where are you going with this? Let's say that you want to start
analyzing the concept "ashtray" and we realize that "metal" or "glass"
are not part of the concept "ashtray" as an ashtray is not of
necessity made of one specified material. But it is made, by
necessity, of some material or other, and, moreover, by necessity, we
understand "material" of the sort that ashtrays would be made of to be
heavier than air. So we're more or less back to the same principle as
shown in the example of the ice. By necessity, and by our
understanding of the conceptual meaning of "ashtray," ashtrays are
heavier than air. This all seems perfectly clear to me, whichever way
we understand one concept to be a "constituent concept" of another.
> >All you're saying is that it isn't necessary for some particular piece
> >of ice to be floating on water in order for that piece of ice to be
> >ice. If that's all you were saying, there'd be no problem.
>
> That's all I'm saying. This isn't rocket science.
Then you're not talking about necessity in the sense relevant to Hume
and Kant saying that necessity is not to be found in experience.
Robert J. Kolker
>
> I reiterate, our concepts are *open-ended* -- that is to say, over
> time, as our learning expands, we can mentally add things to our
> concept of something that were not contained in our concept of it *as
> we held that concept previously*. This preserves previous conceptual
> necessity as well as expands our knowledge of what is related *of
> necessity* to our concept.
So concepts do not define? They are just place holders in our filing
cabinet?
If a concept is open ended then how open? Can anything fit a concept. If
not there must be an inclusion rule or an exclusion rule which is
definite, hence not open ended.
Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
Cathcart is just repeating junk he read many times in ITOE and OPAR.
He desperately needs to branch out. Furthermore, ideas related to a
concept being related "of necessity" once again misses the point of
analyticity versus syntheticity. In fact, I can use Ayn Rand's own
words to support my argument, and already have.
'Observe that the concept "furniture" is an abstraction one step
further removed from perceptual reality than any of its constituent
concepts. "Table" is an abstraction, since it designates any table,
but its meaning can be conveyed simply by pointing to one or two
perceptual objects. There is no such perceptual object as "furniture";
there are only tables, chairs, beds, etc. The meaning of "furniture"
cannot be grasped unless one has first grasped the meaning of its
constituent concepts; these are its link to reality. (On the lower
levels of an unlimited conceptual chain, this is an illustration of
the hierarchical structure of concepts.)
Observe also that the concept "furniture" involves a relationship to
another concept which is not one of its constituent units, but which
has to be grasped before one can grasp the meaning of "furniture": the
concept "habitation." This kind of interrelationship among concepts
grows progressively more complex as the level of concept-formation
grows farther away from perceptual concretes.' (itoe 22-23)
So you see the concept "habitation" is necessary to forming the
concept "furniture," but it is not found among its constituent
concepts. That furniture is found inside habitation is synthetic -
although Rand neglected to consider the idea of furniture intended to
be used outside, such as patio furniture. It just happens to be the
case that furniture is associated with habitations, but it can't
properly be said that this is its nature. Furniture, outside a
habitation, or on the moon, is still furniture; this is analytical. It
would indeed be difficult to understand the concept 'furniture'
outside of its intended context, but that does not render this context
analytical to the concept or necessary to its nature as furniture.
Malrassic Park
<cath...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On May 26, 7:30 am, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>Mr. Park, here's what I'm saying when I say that by conceptual
>necessity we learn all kinds of things about ice, including that it
>floats on water: The concept of a thing references all kinds of
>information in an open-ended way. If we were to analyze a concept, we
>would be mentally breaking it up into other concepts necessarily
>related to it. We analyze "ice" -- we begin with a basic conceptual
>truth as it applies to ice, summarized in a definition -- and we see
>that the concepts used in the definition lead us to other concepts,
>and so on and so forth. This is how we are able to cognize and
>recognize that if we were analyzing the concept and it didn't lead in
>the chain of analysis to a conceptual truth that any referent would
>float on liquid water, then the concept under consideration is not
>that of ice.
We also learn that furniture is intended to be used within or at least
associated with human habitations. This is analytical to an
appropriate understanding of furniture. However, furniture on a
mountaintop is still furniture. The location of the furniture is
irrelevant to its concept, analytically speaking. The proposition that
furniture can be located anywhere is synthetic. The statement of truth
that furniture can be set on fire is synthetic, because it is not
included in the concept of 'furniture' that it can be set on fire. But
it is included in the concept of 'furniture' that it is intended to be
used within a human domicile, that statement of fact or truth is
analytical.
The interesting thing is that I don't even see myself in disagreement
with Rand on analyticity. A concept can be analyzed into its
constituent concepts, even according to her. Everything apart from
those concept is considered synthetic, but of course Rand would
probably deny that in much the same manner as you, and then form a
guilt by association between the modern usage of the "dichotomy" and
Kant. Indeed, Kant not only gave it its present name (but not as a
dichotomy), he was its discoverer. Despite this, nothing I've read
about this in 20th century theories matches what Kant wrote about it,
particularly the stuff Peikoff wrote about validating propositions,
synthetically vs. analytically, which came from Ayers and not Kant.
Thinkers such as Ayers ignored Kant's theory, kept the terminological
distinction, and then moved on to do their own thing with it.
>I've already pointed out that there are things stated in the
>definition alone, and things that are not stated in the definition
>alone but are nevertheless necessarily related in our understanding to
>the concept via a chain of analysis. This is why I keep saying that
>the only useful distinction you've established is "definitional vs.
>non-definitional," since "floats on liquid water" and "is the solid
>form of water" are both necessarily related in our understanding to
>our concept of ice. We can't cognize "ice" and "does not float on
>liquid water" without a contradiction somewhere in our conceptual
>scheme. That's why "floats on liquid water" is not "adding something
>not already contained in the concept."
However, we can cognize "ice" without knowing that it floats on water.
>I reiterate, our concepts are *open-ended* -- that is to say, over
>time, as our learning expands, we can mentally add things to our
>concept of something that were not contained in our concept of it *as
>we held that concept previously*. This preserves previous conceptual
>necessity as well as expands our knowledge of what is related *of
>necessity* to our concept.
"Mentally adding things to our concept of something that were not
contained in our concept previously" is synthetic. But the very
beginning of cognizing our concept is not synthetic, it is analytic.
You have to start somewhere, as with the concept 'house,' "a dwelling
that serves as living quarters for one or more families."
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
When you discover that houses can be painted, that is synthetic to
your concept of a house. It is also synthetic that some houses are
made of brick and some are made of wood, stucco, granite, or various
combinations of these. But that a house has to be made of some
material is obviously analytical, even though this fact doesn't form
part of the definition.
>In your Kantian scheme, it's via expansion upon the original concept,
>what you call an act of synthesis, that's the source of any new
>conceptual necessity, and you dub this a necessity in virtue of a
>"synthetic apriori." I submit that this has it all bass-ackwards.
>What happens is that we *expand our conceptual knowledge of a thing*
>in an open-ended fashion, and that what we are doing is not in any
>way, shape or form generating necessity in this process; we are
>*discovering,* *recognizing* or *identifying* necessity that was
>already there.
Of course, and it was already there a priori. And so you also support,
by your own words, the notion of an a priori element in experience,
because there can be no necessity apart from a priority.
>For some reason in the course of this discussion you are trying to
>separate the matter of necessity and contingency from the matter of
>analyticity and syntheticity. And I am saying that this begs the
>question, given the way that you and Kant take Hume for granted that
>there is no necessity to be had from experience alone and that it's
>via an act of synthesis that necessity is possible. Clearly these
>issues are connected, and I'm breaking down where your presuppositions
>and errors lie in your discussion of analysis and synthesis, in light
>of your assumption that necessity isn't to be had from experience.
The topic of the analytic-synthetic is too simple to be wrong about.
It gets a bit more complicated when people try to tack on necessity
and a priority, particularly the idea of synthetic a priori and other
combinations. But it boils down to the simple fact that "necessity"
(along with universality) is part of the very notion of a priority,
and a synthesis is simply a combination of disparate elements within
a single proposition. Whether or not the latter are combined by
necessity is another question, as necessity would form the proposition
into an objective judgment, and propositions are not necessarily
objective. So I'm not saying that necessity is a -necessary- product
of synthesis. I was only saying this in the context, previously, of
necessary judgments about ice which are synthetic, but I did not
intend to imply that the two would always be engaged within the same
propositions as with a priori judgments. It just happened to be the
case in the example, "ice floats on water," that the proposition is
synthetic and necessary, and which I therefore deem synthetic a priori
(assuming the ice does not weigh 100 pounds and is resting on a glass
of water).
I don't think you got the notion from me that "there is no necessity
to be had from experience alone and that its via an act of synthesis
that necessity is possible." The very idea of experience - alone -
carries along with it necessity, thus objectivity.
>I say this in lieu of doing an analysis of what Rand and/or I mean by
>the term "constituent concept" or "component concept" based on the
>quotes from ITOE you provided. There are thought-provoking matters
>there that I need to think over further, but which nonetheless do not
>affect my argument above. (For instance, you don't define "furniture"
>in terms of "table" -- it's the other way around -- but it strikes me
>as odd, then, to say that "table" is a constituent or component
>concept of "furniture" rather than the other way around. This is
>possibly to say that Rand made her point in the opposite fashion than
>what she had most sensibly intended, and which a normal reading of her
>intentions would have taken away from her prose. But I'm going to
>have to consider this one some more. Again, it does not affect the
>point I made above; if applied to tables, by breaking down the concept
>of table, you will end up with things necessarily related to the
>concept that weren't *explicitly* stated in the definition.)
It is strange for you to state (parenthetically) that 'furniture' is
not defined in terms of 'table' but the other way around, because it
strongly goes against Rand's idea of definition and, indeed, the very
definitions which Rand employed for those two terms at 11 and 22.
>We do, in any case, get this following error:
>
>> Some of which are constituent concepts, some of which aren't. For
>> instance, it is first necessary to observe that all these units
>> designated by the concept "furniture" are to be used within a human
>> habitation. So the concept "habitation" must be grasped first.
>> However, the concept "habitation" does not therefore constitute one
>> of the constituent concepts of "furniture." That would only included
>> items of furniture.
>
>It's a non-sequitur to go from the first statement about how we must
>first understand the meaning of something, to your second statement
>concerning their relationship in a conceptual hierarchy. In any
>event, the concept "habituation" is of necessity related to the
>concept "furniture," and analyzing our concept of furniture leads us
>to the concept of "habituation." To my understanding, I think that's
>a straightforward reading of the term "constituent concepts," whatever
>Rand said. I can't make any sense of your statement that constituent
>concepts of "furniture" would only include items of furniture. That
>sounds like constituent *units* of the concept of furniture, and
>further, that since it's concepts that are the units of higher-level
>concepts, the constituent units of the concept of furniture -- again,
>a concept that's open-ended to be able to take on new examples -- are
>concepts of, e.g., tables, chairs, sofas.
>
>Not that I'm clear on where you think this is going with respect to
>analysis, synthesis, and necessity.
I don't see any non sequitur, as I'm not saying that "habitation" is
part of the conceptual hierarchy leading from 'table' to 'furniture.'
The concept 'furniture' is certainly understood and learned as being
associated with habitations; however, furniture on a mountaintop where
there are no habitations is still furniture. The various and sundry
associations with the concept 'furniture' are synthetic. But that the
*intended* use of its constituent units must involve habitations is
analytical to the very concept "furniture," which is "movable man-made
objects intended to be used in a human habitation" etc. (itoe 22) That
they are found within, or at least associated with, human habitations,
just happens to be the case, and furniture on a mountaintop does not
cease to be furniture simply because of its location.
You seem perplexed at my usage of "constituent units" versus
"constituent concepts." As I explained in my previous post, it is a
choice of phrasing used by Rand herself, if only you would read the
original text. As far as I can tell, Rand wrote "constituent concepts"
when in the context of discussing abstractions from abstractions, but
it is synonymous with "constituent units." She also mentioned
"constituent particulars" at ITOE 17.
Now you're talking about "constituent properties."
>> >All you're saying is that it isn't necessary for some particular piece
>> >of ice to be floating on water in order for that piece of ice to be
>> >ice. If that's all you were saying, there'd be no problem.
>>
>> That's all I'm saying. This isn't rocket science.
>
>Then you're not talking about necessity in the sense relevant to Hume
>and Kant saying that necessity is not to be found in experience.
Necessity is a different topic, but as I said, it's related. And so
when I bring it up I'm not intending to diverge into that topic.
Chris Cathcart
I'll pinpoint one problem here for the moment:
> It is strange for you to state (parenthetically) that 'furniture' is
> not defined in terms of 'table' but the other way around, because it
> strongly goes against Rand's idea of definition and, indeed, the very
> definitions which Rand employed for those two terms at 11 and 22.
But I think it's plainly clear that we define "table" in terms of
"furniture." You're running together two things: (1) how we state the
definition of a concept and (2) how we would come to form a definition
of "furniture" in relation to the units (lower-level concepts, e.g.,
"table," "chair") subsumed under it.
These clearly are two separate matters. Stating something about the
hierarchical ordering of concepts is a distinct matter from providing
a definition of a concept.
A table is necessarily furniture (as I imply when I saw we define
"table" in terms of "furniture"), and in turn, furniture is
necessarily certain things, which are in turn necessarily certain
things.
Hence, down that chain of analysis, we come to other, broader,
conceptual truths about tables that aren't explicitly stated in the
definition. That tables are heavier than air and don't, like birds,
have mechanisms for flying around unaided.
In the process of analyzing our understanding of a term like table, in
doing so in terms of a higher-level concept like "furniture," we are
going "up" the chain of hierarchy while at the same time covering more
and more broad aspects of existence, applicable to more and more
perceptual units. "Furniture" subsumes a winder range of units than
"table." How one would get from this to a statement that we would
define "furniture" in terms of "table," just because hierarchically
"table" is subsumed under "furniture," I haven't the foggiest.
Malrassic Park
<cath...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On May 27, 9:35 am, Malrassic Park <malen...@hotmail.com> wrote:
..
>I'll pinpoint one problem here for the moment:
..
>> It is strange for you to state (parenthetically) that 'furniture' is
>> not defined in terms of 'table' but the other way around, because it
>> strongly goes against Rand's idea of definition and, indeed, the very
>> definitions which Rand employed for those two terms at 11 and 22.
..
>But I think it's plainly clear that we define "table" in terms of
>"furniture." You're running together two things: (1) how we state the
>definition of a concept and (2) how we would come to form a definition
>of "furniture" in relation to the units (lower-level concepts, e.g.,
>"table," "chair") subsumed under it.
Indeed, this forms a large part of ITOE, which distinguishes
concept-formation from defining the concepts - although this is not
epistemology or even an issue introductory to it.
>These clearly are two separate matters. Stating something about the
>hierarchical ordering of concepts is a distinct matter from providing
>a definition of a concept.
..
>A table is necessarily furniture (as I imply when I saw we define
>"table" in terms of "furniture"), and in turn, furniture is
>necessarily certain things, which are in turn necessarily certain
>things.
..
>Hence, down that chain of analysis, we come to other, broader,
>conceptual truths about tables that aren't explicitly stated in the
>definition. That tables are heavier than air and don't, like birds,
>have mechanisms for flying around unaided.
..
>In the process of analyzing our understanding of a term like table, in
>doing so in terms of a higher-level concept like "furniture," we are
>going "up" the chain of hierarchy while at the same time covering more
>and more broad aspects of existence, applicable to more and more
>perceptual units. "Furniture" subsumes a winder range of units than
>"table." How one would get from this to a statement that we would
>define "furniture" in terms of "table," just because hierarchically
>"table" is subsumed under "furniture," I haven't the foggiest.
LIke this: "Movable man-made objects [such as tables, chairs, beds,
cabinets, etc.] intended to be used in a human habitation, which can
support the weight of the human body or support and/or store other,
smaller objects." (Editorial insertion by yours truly.)
Chris Cathcart
wrote:
> Chris Cathcart wrote:
>
> > I reiterate, our concepts are *open-ended* -- that is to say, over
> > time, as our learning expands, we can mentally add things to our
> > concept of something that were not contained in our concept of it *as
> > we held that concept previously*. This preserves previous conceptual
> > necessity as well as expands our knowledge of what is related *of
> > necessity* to our concept.
>
> So concepts do not define? They are just place holders in our filing
> cabinet?
For once you raise a useful question, by accident.
Is the concept just some mental thing under which we open-endedly file
a ton of information, or does it, qua concept, serve a more specific
function?
Qua concept, the function is unit-economy. It enables us to think in
general terms about a whole wide range of instances, without mentally
holding in mind every instance whenever you mentally access a concept.
Rand defines a concept as "a mental integration of two or more units
possessing the same distinguishing characteristic, with their
particular measurements omitted."
Now, when something (particular measurements) get omitted, what
exactly is getting retained and what exactly is getting omitted, and
for what purposes?
For instance, let's say that an entity need not be red in order to be
an apple. And apple can be green. From that standpoint, the concept
"apple" does not reference redness as necessary to the concept. Note
that I say, *to the concept*. For a particular apple that is red,
redness is necessary to what *it* is because that is part of its
makeup of characteristics. *That* fact is an element implicitly
retained in the concept. Rand also points out that a concept refers
to all the instances subsumed under it, past, present and future, so
in *some* sense it is referring to some particular apples' redness as
a necessary component of those apples' characteristics.
So when we cognize an apple, what we do is mentally picture an apple
having definite characteristics. I cannot cognize "apple" without
imagining an apple that is of a specific color. Well, once I have
done *that*, I am mentally delimiting what is necessary and what is
possible to that apple. It can't just automatically switch colors
from one moment to the next. Mentally isolating the non-essential
(non-distinguishing) characteristics and omitting the measurements for
the purpose of concept-formation doesn't erase any of these necessary
facts about apples. *All that has happened* is the mental act of
isolating and distinguishing a class of things (apples) from others
for purposes of unit-economy. That is the role and function of a
concept, qua concept -- that is itself the distinguishing
characteristic of a concept from other mental products (or entities
more broadly).
So in terms of *their* distinguishing characteristics, concepts
define, just as you ask about. But they also have other
characteristics that serve other functions, including "place-holding"
ones. Rand was giving a definition for a concept, not explicating
right in the definition all of a concept's characteristics.
> If a concept is open ended then how open? Can anything fit a concept. If
> not there must be an inclusion rule or an exclusion rule which is
> definite, hence not open ended.
It's open in the sense that new information can be subsumed under it.
It means that whatever it is that you can subsume under a concept
isn't once and forever "frozen." New information about human DNA, for
example, can be subsumed under the concept that we had already had for
"man" going back to ancient days. New discoveries can expand the
things that we know to be necessarily true about humans, even as the
distinguishing characteristics we had used in forming earlier concepts
hasn't changed since that time.
Ralph Hertle
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
[,,,]
> If a concept is open ended then how open? Can anything fit a concept. If
> not there must be an inclusion rule or an exclusion rule which is
> definite, hence not open ended.
>
> Bob Kolker
Your comment is right on.
The question I have regards the concept of a limit. What is your opinion?
A limit in carpentry means that the principle of length, for example,
continues as a measure of extent until a selected or specified point is
reached.
The concept focuses upon the positive aspects of the universal concept,
and not upon the cessation of the principle in the absence of the
principle. E.g., cutting the wood is not the limit. A limit defines a
continued functioning in terms of a particularizing or finite demonstration.
In law the continuing principle is that of rights, for example, and the
limitation upon private firearm ownership is a [claimed] falsification
of the principle that specific means are necessary for the maintenance
of individual life. When the President wants to abrogate the rights of
living women human beings by forcing them to bear children that may seem
to the tyrant to be a just limit, however, to the individual person who
wants to live and act freely, to be healthy, to prosper, and to be happy
in life, the Presidential limit invokes death and not life. In the
proper meaning of limits the continued life-based principle of
individual rights is the functioning that is particularly demonstrated
in objective reality.
Finite particular continuity is the gist of the concept and the
actualization of the limit.
In mathematics, the focus is upon the functioning of the operative
principle, e.g., the temporal existence of the universe, and not upon
any claimed realm of non-existence in any claimed beyond. A straight
line, the concept of that idea which functions according to its causes
of length and even-ness, may be said to be limited by its operative
principle, and not by the points that lie at its two ends.
The limit is a particular demonstration or functioning that operates in
all possible finite results. The termination, when considered outside of
an objective principle, is an anti-concept that attempts to deny the
validity of the principle.
The focus upon the ends of the operation or upon the means of the ends
is a denial of the continuity of the universal principle.
In that sense universal concepts or principles, that are limits of
functioning, are closed concepts.
That is the intention of the meaning of 'closed'.
That a social consensus should determine all meanings and that ideas or
ends should be 'open' to all, vs. identifying that universals should
function as continuing principles, is a horrible termination of a
principle or function, of the mind.
The 'limits' of the advocates of 'consensus' deny the functioning of the
causes, or the concepts, that identify the continuation of the
properties of existents.
................
One thought that would follow the above would be the principle of cause
and necessary effect of the functionings of metaphysical and
epistemological concepts that would be denied by the application of
limits where the context of facts of existents has been usurped by the
advocates of consensus. I would ask, "Does 'consensus' destroy the
common notion of the concept of freedom of action and the continued
identification of individual rights?"
Ralph Hertle
Ralph Hertle
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
[,,,]
> If a concept is open ended then how open? Can anything fit a concept. If
> not there must be an inclusion rule or an exclusion rule which is
> definite, hence not open ended.
>
> Bob Kolker
Ralph Hertle
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
[,,,]
> If a concept is open ended then how open? Can anything fit a concept. If
> not there must be an inclusion rule or an exclusion rule which is
> definite, hence not open ended.
>
> Bob Kolker
Ralph Hertle
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
[,,,]
> If a concept is open ended then how open? Can anything fit a concept. If
> not there must be an inclusion rule or an exclusion rule which is
> definite, hence not open ended.
>
> Bob Kolker
Ralph Hertle
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
[,,,]
> If a concept is open ended then how open? Can anything fit a concept. If
> not there must be an inclusion rule or an exclusion rule which is
> definite, hence not open ended.
>
> Bob Kolker
Malrassic Park
<ralph....@verizon.net> wrote:
>Bob:
>Robert J. Kolker wrote:
>> If a concept is open ended then how open? Can anything fit a concept. If
>> not there must be an inclusion rule or an exclusion rule which is
>> definite, hence not open ended.
>> Bob Kolker
>Your comment is right on.
Go ahead and send your post 5 more times so Kolker can ignore it 5
more times.