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RCR, I'm having difficulty with the formatting on this post. On my 800x600 screen I have to scroll to see the right side of your text. That's the first time I've encountered it on SOLO, and I have no idea of the cause or the cure.
[Added: I think the cause was the very wide underline divider you used underneath your "RCR" and before "Excerpts From: Introduction ..." The SOLO editor has that, if you're not using email, with the Break button.]
I'm a little reticent to post this, due to the heated, lengthy, and somewhat meandering nature of this thread...however, I don't see in any of the previous posts any substantial excerpts from Rand herself on the topics of "percepts", "units", "concepts", and "measurement"...
I invited excerpts in my first posts, but most responses were
rather generalized. So even this late in the game they're welcome.
RCR
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Excerpts From: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Ayn Rand
"A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his sense and apprehends reality. When we speak of "direct perception" or "direct awareness", we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct. It is acquired by man much later; it is scientific, conceptual discovery."
Therein lies the problem with Rand's definition: A percept is a "group" of sensations. How do percepts "group" sensations? Without this "grouping," perceptions are undifferentiated chaos.
My thesis throughout this thread is that perceptions require elements of CONCEPTUAL thought in order to achieve this grouping. No grouping (differentiation and integration) is attainable without identification and classification of the sensory differentia.
"The building blocks of man's knowledge is the concept of an "existent"--of something that exists, be it a thing, an attribute or an action. Since it is a concept, man cannot grasp it explicitly until he has reached the conceptual stage. But it is implicit in every percept (to perceive a thing is to perceive that it exists) and man grasps it implicitly on the perceptual level---i.e. he grasps the constituents of the concept "existent", the data which are later to be integrated by that concept. It is this implicit knowledge that permits his consciousness to develop further."
Rand correctly notes that perceiving an existent qua existent requires a concept. Where she fails to integrate her position is the implication that "explicit" and "implicit" are actually different processes.
Presumably by "explicit" she means conscious and by "implicit" she means unconscious. Yes, the conscious recognition of an existent is conceptual. But why would this be less true at the unconscious level? In order to IDENTIFY something, which first requires recognition of it as an actual existent, conceptual processes are required. This is no less true at a perceptual or unconscious level.
"(It may be supposed that the concept "existent" is implicit even on the level of sensations--if and to the extent that a consciousness is able to discriminate on that level. A sensation is a sensation of something, as distinguished from nothing of the preceding and surrounding moments. A sensation does not tell man what exists, but only that it exists..)"
In one important sense that's untrue. Even at the cellular level, cells often differentiate. Taste buds, for example, only respond to certain types of molecules. In short, not only do they sense something as opposed to nothing (existence), but by their nature they are reporting to the organism what exists.
'The (implicit) concept "existent" undergoes three stages of development in man's mind. The first stage is a child's awareness of objects, of things--which represents the (implicit) concept "entity". The second and closely allied stage is the awareness of specific, particular things which he can recognize and distinguish from the rest of his perceptual field--which represents the (implicit) concept "identity".'
She was getting close here. Babies as young as two weeks seem to exhibit depth perception. It is likely an innate ability. It presupposes an ability to discern objects--and pattern recognition is an essential element of intelligence.
Rand comes close to acknowledging that concepts are required at the perceptual level by noting that even differentiating one object from another requires conceptual thought. It is unfortunate that she minimized this by calling it "implicit." It is as much concept-formation as our conscious thought.
"The third stage consists of grasping relationships among these entities by grasping the similarities and differences of the identities. This requires the transformation of the (implicit) concept "entity" into the (implicit) concept "unit."
"When a child observes that two objects (which he will later learn to designates "tables") resemble each other, but are different from four other objects ("chairs"), his mind is focusing on a particular attribute of the objects (their shape), then isolating them, according to their differences, and integrating them as units into separate groups according to their similarities.
"This is the key, the entrance to the conceptual level of man's consciousness."
Here she's mixing the perceptual with the conscious conceptual, which is entirely fitting, as it's impossible to separate the two. She's wrong to limit it to "man," however.
The ability to regard entities as units is man's distinctive method of cognition, which other living species are unable to follow.
This is completely and utterly wrong. It's not surprising that Rand believed this 50 years ago, but the fact that this is still quoted as if it were true is astonishing.
Primate and bird studies show that other animals have this ability. Irene Pepperberg's parrot, for example, is able to abstract the differences in groups of objects (such as shape, material, color) and respond to "What's different, Alex?" with "Shape" or "Material" or "Color," etc.
This is not only the faculty of "regard[ing] entities as units" but the faculty of ABSTRACTING DIFFERENCES (or sameness) IN QUALITIES as conceptual units.
A unit is an existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members. (Two stones are two units; so are two square feet of ground, if regarded as distinct parts of a continues stretch of ground.) Note that the concept "unit" involves an act of consciousness (a selective focus, a certain way of regarding things), but that it is not an arbitrary creation of consciousness: it is a method of identification or classification according to the attributes which a consciousness observes in reality. This method permits any number of classifications and cross-classification: one may classify things according to their shape or color or weight or size or atomic structure; but the criterion of classification is not invented, it is perceived in reality. Thus the concept "unit" is a bridge between metaphysics and epistemology: units do not exist qua units, what exists are things, but units are things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships.
Pepperberg's parrot, when presented with new objects, responds to "What material, Alex?" with answers like "Wood" and "Paper" and "Plastic." Clearly animals also abstract qualities and classify according to them: units are things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships.
With the grasp of the (implicit) concept "unit" man reaches the conceptual level of cognition, which consists of two interrelated fields: the conceptual and the mathematical. The process of concept-formation is, in large part, a mathematical process.
This is an example of the concept-percept dichotomy, where Rand uses mixed terms. She seems to acknowledge, more or less, the role of concepts at the "(implicit)" level, but then contrasts that with "the conceptual level of cognition." This is misleading, and leads to Objectivists denying that perceptions really are a form of concept formation.
[snip]
"Man is the measure of all things." Man is the measure, epistemologically--not metaphysically. In regard to human knowledge, man has to be the measure, since he has to bring all things into the realm of the humanly knowable. But, far from leading to subjectivism, the methods which he has to employ require the most rigorous mathematical precision, the most rigorous compliance with objective rules and facts--if the end product is to be knowledge.
This is also misleading. Much of what can properly be called knowledge is derived from processes which are less than rigorous. It's still knowledge, and has actual referents in objective fact.
...
Words transform concepts into (mental) entities; definitions provide them with identity. (Words without definitions are not language but inarticulate sounds.) We shall discuss definitions latter and at length."
Some are misled by unqualified statements into believing that language is necessary for concept formation. It is not. Verbal definitions are not alone in "provid[ing entities] with identity."
Animals like Alex show us that concept formation is happening without language, otherwise parrots (for example) would not be able to identify something as simple as the difference between food and refuse. Words are an extremely powerful tool of abstraction, but animals and humans have the power to abstract based upon other mental representations.
This thread has become about the false concept-percept dichotomy and whether rationality is the sole province of humans. The Rand quotations were helpful to furthering that end.
Nathan Hawking
(Edited by Nathan Hawking on 6/06, 12:19am)
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