Intentional Conceptualism - Valid Concept or Red Herring?

Ed,

Peter Abelard (see my post #17 ) is the original conceptualist, and lived and died before any of these were ever thought of:

Classical conceptualists start in the quicksand of "paddlehack" my euphemism for the acronym PDLHK (Plato-Descartes-Locke-Hume-Kant). This quicksand drowns you more the more that you wrestle around in it. How can this be?

... and why in the world do you include Locke in with the rest of these philosophy killers?

Regi

Post 21

Saturday, July 3, 2004 - 5:32am

Ed,

intentional - on purpose, not by mistake.

nature - physical existence, or, that which a thing is and which determines how it behaves, as in A is A, a thing is what it is, its nature is what its nature is.

essence - perfume; otherwise a useless concept meant to imply a thing's basic nature.

universal - everywhere and always true; otherwise a pseudo-concept that attempts to gather under one head a number of disparate and logically contradictory ideas.

identity - what a thing is; "A," as in A is A, anything that isolates a thing from all other things conceptually.

unit - a referent of a concept, "one" of anything.

Regi

(Edited by Reginald Firehammer on 7/05, 6:51am)

Post 22

Saturday, July 3, 2004 - 6:36am

There is a great deal of value in Locke�s epistemology, and I found many similarities to Rand�s views in his work. I can�t help but think he must have influenced her.

Post 23

Saturday, July 3, 2004 - 9:45am

Regi, Rodney,

Locke's insufficient understanding is found in his inability - without explicit acknowledgement of intellectual powers - to account for general (abstract) ideas. To his credit, he does acknowledge the existence of these ideas, but does not explain how they can get into our heads.

And merely interjecting the word "understanding" does not exonerate him if human understandings are left unexplained due to his failure to explicitly acknowledge the powers of the intellect (intellectual understanding).

The theme running through PDLHK is that the mind is entirely a sensitive faculty (no intellectual understanding). In this respect, besides the immediate perceptions of sense-experience, we can only be conscious OF the ideas in our minds (as if we are "sensing" all of what's in our heads - without an understanding of how things got there or, what is the other side of the intellect-free coin, what their purpose is).

On this deficiency of Locke - that of failing to account for how abstract ideas, which are taken to be THAT WHICH we are directly conscious of - can get into the mind (which is assumed to be entirely a sensitive faculty) Hume takes Locke to task, attacking the inconsistency.

For illustrative purposes, read this quote from Hume, and view it from his perspective (that the mind is a sensing organ; without any explicit intellectual powers of understanding). Notice how, in this respect, you can never get to the general from the particular (and notice Hume's unidentified shift from "conceive" to "perceive"):

"Let man try to conceive a triangle in general, which is neither Isosceles nor Scalenum, nor has any particular length or proportion of sides; and he will soon perceive the absurdity of all the scholastic notions with regard to abstraction and general ideas."

On this mistaken philosophical path, Adler puts it succinctly:
"If all we have are sense-perceptions and images derived from sense, then we can never be aware of anything but a particular triangle."

Ed

Post 24

Saturday, July 3, 2004 - 10:20am

Brendan, another criticism of conceptualism; with [Classical] interjected for emphasis ...

from:
http://www.drury.edu/ess/history/modern/nominalism.html#conceptualism
---------------
Abelard argues that the mind is the creator of "humanity" as an abstract concept, one made up of the likenesses shared by individual human beings. The mind creates this form as it is capable, through the process of abstraction, of separating out those likenesses from the distinguishing characteristics which mark each human being as different from others.

The universal term hence has meaning as it refers to this abstract concept -- a concept clearly grounded in the sense-experience of particular entities. Notice, however, that this abstract concept requires that Abelard expand nominalism both in terms of

1) how words can have meaning, and
2) the available flavors or levels of reality (metaphysics/ontology).

they [words] have meaning as they refer not to particular entities given in sense-experience, but as they refer to the abstract concepts "built out of" the particulars of sense-experience, where these concepts exist only in the mind (not as entities existing independently of particular entities given in sense-experience).

1) this account remains philosophically unsatisfactory -- and indeed,
2) the debate between nominalism and realism extends into our own day.

1) To say that the mind creates the abstract concepts as it "focuses its attention on common likenesses" is to beg the question. This is to assume that the mind has the ability to create the entities to which universal terms refer -- and that these exist as based on "likenesses" further assumed to exist in particulars, and further assumed to be obvious to the mind when it chooses to focus its attention on them.

But this is just the original philosophical question at stake in the debate: are there universal entities apart from the particulars of sense-experience, and if so, in what sense do they exist, how do they relate to the particulars, etc.

So, while [Classical] conceptualism is to be admired as an elegant resolution between the nominalist and realist camps -- and one that "works," perhaps, if our doctrinal focus in this period concerns us more than philosophical soundness -- [Classical] conceptualism remains philosophically problematic.
---------------

Brendan, the key to the error above is found in these words:

"This is to assume that the mind has the ability to create the entities to which universal terms refer -- and that these exist as based on "likenesses" further assumed to exist in particulars, and further assumed to be obvious to the mind when it chooses to focus its attention on them.

But this is just the original philosophical question at stake in the debate: are there universal entities apart from the particulars of sense-experience, and if so, in what sense do they exist, how do they relate to the particulars, etc."

The "sense" in which universals exist is in the mode of intellectual interaction with reality.

Sense-perception (a power which the animals share with us) is that BY WHICH we know that particulars exist.

Concepts (universals) are that BY WHICH we understand what the already-known-to-exist particulars really are - and how they fit in, or are organized into, our comprehensive understanding of reality (animals lack this power).

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/03, 10:21am)

Post 25

Saturday, July 3, 2004 - 10:59am

Brendan, the last part of this 3-part rebuttal to conceptualism critics ...

from: http://www.friesian.com/universl.htm

"Metaphysically, [Classical] Conceptualism is therefore no different from Nominalism. It is a psychologistic theory, i.e. it attributes structures that we see in reality to structures imposed by the human psyche."

This is merely a Kantian play-on-words, which places the mind AGAINST reality, rather than IN it. It says that if there is a HUMAN way of understanding the world then - in virtue of that fact! - human understanding has become invalidated!

Intentional Conceptualism - by explicit acknowledgement of the fact that understandings will necessarily be of the HUMAN TYPE (read: Intellectual, Conceptual, Universal, etc) - is left unscathed by this criticism. Although a conceptualism which fails in this explicit acknowledgement will hereby be "committed to the flames as sophistry and illusion."

"Indeed, some structures in the world are imposed by the human psyche. There is nothing natural about a coffee pot, which is an artifact of human conception and human purposes. A Platonic Form or Aristotelian substance that is the objective existence of the abstract and universal coffee pot would seem to be the reductio ad absurdum of their theories as much as the "reasonably good eyesight" is of Mates's."

There IS something "natural" about a coffee pot (in spite of it being Man-Made; and not Metaphysical). It is "natural" for humans to abstract from a lake or pond (as something which "holds water") to the invention of little "lakes or ponds" of coffee which we drink from. To repeat a recurrent theme: This intellectual power of humans must be acknowledged for the Problem of Universals to be transcended.

"If Conceptualism were merely the argument that there is not always an objective structure to correspond to the difference between essence and accident, this would be quite true. However, it seems to be the case that there is an objective structure corresponding to some essences, since there are natural kinds of things (dogs, feldspars, stars, flowers, etc.) whose identity owes nothing to human convention or purposes."

Natural kinds owe something to human purposes, which are more than the mere conventions of the classical conceptualist. Natural kinds owe everything to the human purpose of understanding reality. They are the human way of understanding - rather than just acknowledging the existence of - particular things.

"Furthermore, since all attributes (properties) are universals, whether essential or accidental, this argument would be beside the point. Even conventional concepts are based on real characteristics. A coffee pot must hold coffee, and its ability to do so owes nothing to convention but everything to the nature of the materials and even the nature of space. Those cannot be altered, much as many would like to, simply by making some change in the conventions of our conception."

Right! But replace "convention" with "reality-based purpose" and the whole house-of-cards criticism falls to the floor where it belongs.

"If a Conceptualist allows even a moment when real differences are recognized, then, however conventional the rest of the constructions, a fundamental element of Realism has been accepted into the theory."

A fundamental element of Realism (that reality is what it is) IS ACCEPTED into the theory of Intentional Conceptualism. The only part missing is the fundamental element of Intention (human minds, if they are to understand things, must regard them as classes or kinds, rather than ONLY perceiving them as sensible particulars).

"Thus, however conventional a fundamental unit of measure may be, this does not make all fundamental units somehow the same. A meter really is more than three times as long as a foot, which means they are commensurable, i.e. each can be converted into the other. Commensurability and conversion are only possible because of the independent, objective, and real natures of each."

Recognizing the last sentence as true, we can ask whether it is meaningful in a criticism of Intentional Conceptualism (does IC fail to integrate this? No!). To see this fact, one must merely go back and change "however conventional" (an artifact of classical conceptualism) to "however purposeful" and acknowledge that man has to use "unit" to understand that which is not perceptually present (atoms, electrons, etc) or even that which cannot be perceptually apprehended (93 million miles, etc). At this point, the whole criticism falls on its face again.

Ed

Post 26

Saturday, July 3, 2004 - 5:13pm

Anyway, Regi, to continue in my effort to understand your view, I need short answers to some Socratic questions. You said in another thread:

The essence of a thing is its nature. Ayn Rand understood that "the nature of the units, i.e., the essential characteristics without which the units would not be the kind of existents they are" is the actual case. If essence were epistemological, it would be what we think about things that gives them their nature, that makes them what they are.

I think I have shown that, in a contextual interpretation of that quote, Rand does not vacillate in her view of essence as epistemological. But whether or not we agree on that, Regi, I want to be sure I understand your own view.

Are you saying that some qualities are metaphysically essential and some merely "possible"? In the case of planets, for example, are you saying that having or not having rings is a metaphysically inessential aspect of planets? Just yes, no, or yes and no with a short explanation.

(May I request that, for the moment, others not comment on the issues I raise here. Thank you.)

Post 27

Saturday, July 3, 2004 - 8:42pm

Rodney,

That is an excellent question.

Are you saying that some qualities are metaphysically essential and some merely "possible"? In the case of planets, for example, are you saying that having or not having rings is a metaphysically inessential aspect of planets? Just yes, no, or yes and no with a short explanation.

The short answer is Yes. For those planets with rings, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, rings are necessary. (For the planets that do not have rings, rings are necessarily excluded.)

What I mean by that is, as a particular existent, Jupiter must have a ring or it is not Jupiter.

As units of the concept, "planets," rings are possible attributes. Some planets have them, some do not, but they are not necessary for a planet to be a planet. It is necessary that they be in some orbit about some star. That would be a necessary attribute of all planets, with or without possible rings.

The distinction between necessary and possible attributes only exists for general concepts, not for particulars. All of a particular's attributes are necessary, because, without any of them, it would not be the particular it is.

(Note: Technically, things only exist, "now," but things persist over time. For any particular, over time, there are necessary and possible qualities--necessary qualities are those that cannot change over time without that thing becoming something else, and possible qualities are those that may change; that is, be true at some times and not at others.)

If you mean by "essence" all of an existent's necessary qualities (as a unit of a general concept or any particular over time), whether those qualities are known or unknown, that I could agree with. I do not think the term "essence" adds anything to our understanding of concepts, however.

Regi

(Edited by Reginald Firehammer on 7/04, 3:41am)

Post 28

Sunday, July 4, 2004 - 9:00am

Now, before I respond, I would ask you to sum up in about 25 words or less how your view is any different from Rand's. So far, I hear nothing original, unless something comes out in your next post.

Post 29

Sunday, July 4, 2004 - 12:22pm

Hi Rodney,

Now, before I respond, I would ask you to sum up in about 25 words or less how your view is any different from Rand's.

I do not say that it is. I do not use the word "essence" at all. She did. To use it at all, I think, is a mistake, but not necessarily a philosophical one.

So far, I hear nothing original, unless something comes out in your next post.

No new concept? Possibly. But I do not think you will find the "necessary/possible" distinction explicated in exactly the same way anywhere else. If you do know of a place, I would love the reference.

Regi

Post 30

Sunday, July 4, 2004 - 4:35pm

Ed, you have identified the major problems with conceptualism, especially in regard to the question-begging nature of naming things. The issues you present in your three previous posts are too lengthy to deal with on a point-by-point basis, so I will confine myself to a few comments on one aspect.

�Their shared error is in thinking that the mind's "ideas" [regard "ideas" as "concepts" - for the best view of this fundamental error!] are that OF WHICH we are directly conscious (instead of them being that BY WHICH we are conscious).�

Taking Locke as an exemplar, as I understand him, he uses the term �ideas� in a slightly different way to the modern view. He divides ideas into ideas of sensation -- roughly modern �sense-data� � and ideas of reflection � roughly concepts. For Locke the ideas of sensation are received passively by the mind via the senses, and these are reflected on by the mind to produce further simple and complex ideas.

So in that sense, for Locke the immediate objects of awareness are ideas of sensation. When you say that �ideas �[are] that BY WHICH we are conscious�, I assume you mean conscious of objects, in which case I think I can see what you�re getting at: that concepts are the means by which we are aware of objects.

At first glance, this might be persuasive, but it strikes me there is an element of circularity going on here. By that I mean that the concept is derived from consideration of the objects in question, whereas the object is known by reference to the concept. (I sometimes wonder whether this whole question of universals is just a question-begging exercise about why we can name things.)

Brendan

Post 31

Sunday, July 4, 2004 - 5:45pm

Brendan,

When I said that ideas are that by which we are conscious, I was speaking of concepts (as the "ideas") and conceptual awareness (as the "conscious"-ness).

Perhaps an example would make the issue more clear. Here's a problematic quote from Locke's human understanding essay:

" ... and the Power to produce any Idea in our mind, I call Quality of the Subject wherein that power is. Thus a Snow-ball having the power to produce in us the Ideas of White, Cold, and Round, the Powers to produce those Ideas in us, as they are in the Snow-ball, I call Qualities."

Brendan, notice how Locke's explication of the process by which abstract ideas (white, cold, round) get into our heads tends to put the mind into quite a passive role?

To his credit, he does allude to some kind of an interaction going on between the mind and reality.

On this last point, I have (by working out the outline of IC) merely elaborated and embellished on and with the gems that ARE found in conceptualism and on the Rand's theory of the process of abstraction, a process that is the universal (pardon the pun) method of human understanding (I "married" the concepts and asked for others to speak up or forever hold their peace).

What's especially promising is that, in doing such things, I've rationally justified human objectivity in terms that mainstream philosophers already accept and use.

My bold claim is that there is now no reason for them to refrain from jumping onboard the O-ist bandwagon!

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/04, 5:46pm)

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/04, 7:12pm)

Post 32

Sunday, July 4, 2004 - 10:24pm

John Locke writes:
>" ... and the Power to produce any Idea in our mind, I call Quality of the Subject wherein that power is. Thus a Snow-ball having the power to produce in us the Ideas of White, Cold, and Round, the Powers to produce those Ideas in us, as they are in the Snow-ball, I call Qualities."

Ed writes:
>Brendan, notice how Locke's explication of the process by which abstract ideas (white, cold, round) get into our heads tends to put the mind into quite a passive role?

Of course it seems passive! "Blank slates" are passive, sitting around just waiting to be written on. Locke was a "blank-slater", just like Rand; an crude idea Popper drolly referred to as the "bucket" theory of the mind.

Ed, ask yourself this: can a "tabula rasa" have *intent*?
I - don't - think - so! You can't have your cake and eat it too on this one, I'm afraid. So if you want to have "intent" in your system, you're going to have to give up Rand's theory of mind. (Fortunately, that's no great loss)

Rand, like most philosophers, just doesn't bother taking science into account. They just study themselves studying reality, usually in a passive state (like sitting thinking!), and that's about it. (Is it any wonder solipsism and verbalism abound in philosphy?)

When you look at the biological story, what appears to happen fits best with an evolutionary "interactionist" model. By *actively* interacting with its environment over time, a particular type of organism evolves to its sensory needs to its best survival in its particular environment, an uneven process that nonetheless has no definite stop point. This is true of dogs, monkeys, molluscs, fish, amoeba, you name it, who all see the world differently. Why should man be any exception? Can we hear the sounds a dog does? No. Does that mean those sounds don't exist? No. Does that mean our senses only give us an edited version of reality? Yes. Simple as that.

An "interactionist" approach of course does not mean that "reality does not exist". In fact, it means that it has to! Attacking the extreme subjectivist argument ( eg "the world is my dream")is attacking a complete strawman (which of course, never stops anyone doing it ad tedium and thinking this extremely clever). If their sensory needs were completely mismatched to their environment, the organism would be *evolved out* almost instantly! Further, if the "bucket" theory was true, *perceptual evolution itself* would be pretty much unnecessary! You'd just have bigger or smaller buckets (or "blank slates" or whatever).

Evolutionary economy therefore forces us, and all organisms of the earth, to be *subjective creatures*, and much of the way we view the world comes pre-loaded into our mental systems, as it does for a bat, or a dog.. The amazing ability we have evolved that sets us apart from the subjective world of dogs and bats is "objective knowledge" - knowledge that we create, that nonetheless exists outside of ourselves, like a spider's web. The number system is an excellent example. For while man invented the numerical system, there exist numbers no man has ever thought of. Further, its rules are entirely *non-subjective*, and very probably has rules that no man has yet discovered as well. It goes without saying that "objective knowledge like has been a huge evolutionary advantage, for it means we can create ideas and test them - and, if they are wrong, *they*can die in our stead!

It seems to me that "intentional conceptualism" is a ultimately lengthy way of avoiding the subjectivity of consciousness - "subjectivity" being a term that Objectivists treat like a swear word, but one that simply acknowledges the existence of individual internal mental states - moods, emotions, imagination, intuition. I admire your attempt to overcome the passive fallacy, but I am afraid I find it hard to conceive of an intentional blank.

- Daniel

Post 33

Monday, July 5, 2004 - 8:55am

Regi, earlier you said: "She was comparing the Objectivist view of essence to the Aristotelian view. She says 'Objectivism regards it [essence] as epistemological.' ... That's what she said, and it's wrong. She wasn't infallible. She made mistakes."

Now you say, in answer to my request of you to sum up how your view is any different from Rand's: "I do not say that it is. I do not use the word 'essence' at all. She did. To use it at all, I think, is a mistake, but not necessarily a philosophical one."

I am trying to get your view clearly in my mind. Do you now agree that essential characteristics are an epistemological phenomenon? That "essentials" are only so for purposes of cognition? That you have only been quarreling with AR's choice of words all along?

Post 34

Monday, July 5, 2004 - 1:24pm

Rodney,

Regi, earlier you said: "She was comparing the Objectivist view of essence to the Aristotelian view. She says 'Objectivism regards it [essence] as epistemological.' ... That's what she said, and it's wrong. She wasn't infallible. She made mistakes."

Now you say, in answer to my request of you to sum up how your view is any different from Rand's: "I do not say that it is. I do not use the word 'essence' at all. She did. To use it at all, I think, is a mistake, but not necessarily a philosophical one."

I think Rand understood that the nature of a thing was its necessary qualities, just as I do, because she said, "A definition must identify the nature of the units, i.e., the essential characteristics without which the units would not be the kind of existents they are."

You will recall I said, If you mean by "essence" all of an existent's necessary qualities (as a unit of a general concept or any particular over time), whether those qualities are known or unknown, that I could agree with. I do not think the term "essence" adds anything to our understanding of concepts, however.

So I think she was philosophically correct in her understanding of what a thing is, which is metaphysical. I think she was wrong to call those "essential characteristics" "essence" and to say it is epistemological.

Now hold your breath--she was also wrong to say "A definition must identify the nature of the units, i.e., the essential characteristics." A definition only has to isolate the referents of a concept from all other existents. Metaphysically, physical things are isolated from others by their qualities, epistemologically we may have no idea what a thing's essential qualities are, and yet are able to identify them. For example, when some forms of life were first found near volcanic vents in the ocean floor, they had no idea what they were or what their nature was, but brought them up and labeled the samples with descriptive words like, "vent-hole worm-like red thing." They had a concept for those things, and eventually learned what their nature was and no doubt changed their definition to fit the knew knowledge, but it was still the same concept for the same referents. When a child has learned some people are "men," and some are, "women," it hasn't the faintest notion of what their essential qualities are, and its definition amounts to little more than "daddy-type-people" and "mommy-type-people." The concept has not changed at all when he finally does learn something about their essential nature, if he ever learns it.

I think Rand, less than most others, still tended to confuse knowledge about the referents of concepts and concepts themselves.

Regi

Post 35

Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - 1:48pm

Ed: ��notice how Locke's explication of the process by which abstract ideas (white, cold, round) get into our heads tends to put the mind into quite a passive role?�

True enough, and that�s a major problem for Locke�s theory of knowledge: how is it that a tabula rasa mind is able to work up its various ideas from the bare particulars of sense-data, in the absence of some sort of ordering faculty of the mind?

So for Locke, at least some aspects of the mind must be passive in order that the basic stuff of knowledge � sense-data � can become present in the mind. But that forces him to make a distinction between passive and active aspects of the mind, since he seems to regard perception as an operation of the mind.

Ayn Rand of course faces the very same problem: how to convert sense-data into the units that form the basis of concepts. Her solution is via measurement omission, and that highlights two similar problems: first, is measurement omission a perceptual, automatic, and therefore �passive� process, or does it involve an activity of the mind?; secondly, if the process is merely passive, this implies the real existence of universals, since measurement omission must be the omission of something external, since the mind is making no contribution of its own.

On the other hand, if measurement omission is an active process of the mind, then it seems that the mind is involved in some very important aspects of perception, and is perhaps not as tabula rasa as Rand seems to think.

Brendan

Post 36

Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - 7:42pm

Daniel, Brendan;

Daniel,

Ed writes:
>Brendan, notice how Locke's explication of the process by which abstract ideas (white, cold, round) get into our heads tends to put the mind into quite a passive role?

Of course it seems passive! "Blank slates" are passive, sitting around just waiting to be written on. Locke was a "blank-slater", just like Rand; an crude idea Popper drolly referred to as the "bucket" theory of the mind.

Ed, ask yourself this: can a "tabula rasa" have *intent*?
I - don't - think - so! You can't have your cake and eat it too on this one, I'm afraid. So if you want to have "intent" in your system, you're going to have to give up Rand's theory of mind. (Fortunately, that's no great loss)

Rand, like most philosophers, just doesn't bother taking science into account. They just study themselves studying reality, usually in a passive state (like sitting thinking!), and that's about it. (Is it any wonder solipsism and verbalism abound in philosphy?)

Daniel, I thought I outlined the difference between mode of cognition and content of cognition (blank slates have to do with content, not mode). Besides, the slate's only blank until the first percept! We're born with the human capacity (unrealized at first) for the human mode of conceptual awareness - which is best denoted as intentional conceptualism.

Brendan see above (omissions are active mental regard - actions of a consciousness).

Ed

Post 37

Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 11:04pm