Concepts and Percepts--Are They Different? Are They Certain?

In addition, I don't recall Ed ever actually addressing this issue: Is 'knowledge' only that which we have personally corroborated?

It might do, Ed, if you could put together an argument for this superior term. So far, you’ve given us an example, the star-shaped cookie cutter, viz: “If you've made a cookie cutter into the shape of a star, then you may logically assume that the cookies cut (all of the cookies cut) with this cookie cutter--will come out star-shaped.”

Induction is usually understood as the process of drawing general empirical truths from particular facts. The particular fact in the above case seems to be: “this cookie cutter is star-shaped”; the inductive generalisation: “all of the cookies cut with this cookie cutter will come out star-shaped”.

As it stands, this is a non sequitur. In order to show that star-shaped cookie cutters invariably produce star-shaped cookies, you need a connecting principle. Presumably, this principle is “appeal to mechanistic understanding”. So now you’ve got an argument: 1) this cookie cutter is star-shaped; 2) mechanistic understanding of the action of cutters and dough; 3) all of the cookies cut will be star-shaped.

I don’t think we’d have any problem agreeing over what is meant by (1) and (3), but what about (2)? How would you establish the principle of mechanistic understanding? You can’t re-use the cookie cutter argument as I’ve outlined it, because that argument appeals to the principle without establishing it. So how would you arrive at the principle of mechanistic understanding without begging the question?

Brendan

In addition, I don't recall Ed ever actually addressing this issue: Is 'knowledge' only that which we have personally corroborated?

No.
 

He didn't like the idea of calling information we derive from encyclopedias knowledge, but has he personally verified that Canada is north of the US? That astronauts have walked on the moon? That the moon is a quarter-million miles from Earth?

No.

This is an aspect of the problem of induction. It is unlikely in the extreme that the US faked the moon landings, but that is exactly the definition of inductive logic: likely but not absolutely certain.

The moon landing (a past event whose context is now unavailable for direct access) will have to be viewed as a merely the best available opinion--one that is strengthened / weakened by the level of consilience surrounding it. 
 

Excluding this from what we call knowledge would exclude the vast majority of human belief, I think.

I don't share your concern, Nathan. Look at contemporary ethics / politics--and tell me, what do you see? A vast majority of erroneous belief. This is no problem, as we are merely in the matrix--and we need to take the red pill. I am (among many others here) manufacturing red pills.

Nathan:

>This is an aspect of the problem of induction. It is unlikely in the extreme that the US faked the moon landings, but that is exactly the definition of inductive logic: likely but not absolutely certain.

 

Nathan, Hume's result applies not only to *absolutely certain* but to *likely* or *probable* too.

 

I don't see that your view escapes Hume's problem.

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?

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). This confuses "thought" with "things" and "mode of cognition" with "content of cognition," ultimately placing a burden on the classical conceptualist to defend that "the names we use derive their significance from the ideas in our minds to which they refer" (the Innate Idea Problem).

But if "ideas" are merely that BY WHICH we attain conceptual consciousness of really existing things (that BY WHICH we understand what is common to some particulars - and in meaningful contrast to others) then, with regard to any commonality that we do come to understand in this way, we can affirm rather than "deny its objective reality."

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."

An objective method of concept formation employs our ability to grasp concretes as things which are reducible to a common unit. We can do this WITHOUT antecedent concepts (words). Here is a catchy illustration of the beginning of the process:

When first defining "foot-long hotdogs," one method would be to quickly make an intuitive leap and argue that it means "panting poodles!" I believe that this is the process you are attacking when you attack Aristotle's methods as something requiring intuition - lacking objectivity in the assignment of "essences."

An objective method, however, would proceed differently. Let's take the first term first "foot-long." In regard to length, we know what a "foot" is, because we've seen one (it is an immediately perceptible unit; we can apply it without any appeal to other words). We can directly relate concretes to this unit to determine OBJECTIVELY whether a given concrete is to be excluded from the definition (by failing to correspond to the unit "foot").

Daniel, do you see where this is going (we will end with objectively formed definitions that are BOTH successfully differentiated AND refer to the facts of reality? Do you see how "every definition" DOES NOT require "an additional term?" Do you see how "changing the aim of this method from 'essences' to 'concepts', as Rand does," DOES "change the problem?"

" ... but this example has nothing to do with identity. The bent-stick illusion is a predicate statement, so A=A has nothing to tell us about it."

Brendan, it does have to do with identity. Saying " ... A=A has nothing to tell us about it." is inconsequential here - as I stated above: "A is A" is not meant to provide new knowledge (you're merely paraphrasing me while missing the point). For your quote to have relevance to my argument, wording must be changed to reflect emphasis on understanding, not on knowledge.

You say that the illusion is a predicate statement. Well then, let's pick our predicates and check for "A is A"s instrumentality in promoting a better understanding of reality:

One possible predicate to choose would be: "is bent" (the stick "is bent" when it is under water)

Another possible predicate to choose would be: "appears bent" (the stick "appears bent" when it is under water)

How do we choose between these? When faced with this choice, does "A is A" now have import (as an intellectual "guardrail" leading us to the truth of the matter)?

"A is A" allows us to effectively choose between rival predicates so that we can have informative (true) propositions at our disposal to dramatically aid in our understanding of the world and inform our decision-making while living on earth. It's just something that only has value when applied as a veridical constraint on the myriad of propositions a human mind is exposed to in the world. This is what I meant above when I said that a mind is (counter-intuitively) "empowered" by the constraints of reason and reality.

Bayesian: How in the heck can you be so certain of this - and especially without more empirical knowledge?

Aristotelian: Mechanistic understanding.

Bayesian: Sounds like a cool trick, I'll have to look into it - when I get time away from my liklihood ratios, that is.

Aristotelian: It's no "trick" - it's the proper use of your mind - you are a conceptual being.

Bayesian: Are you starting-in with that metaphysical stuff again?

Aristotelian: Yes ... I guess I can't help but to base my reasoning solidly in the actuality of reality.

Bayesian: Oh dear, where does all this mumbo-jumbo end?

Aristotelian: Actually, I can tell you that, too. You see, if you just work to understand these axioms here ...

Excerpt from Adler's objective invalidation of Nominalism as a viable philosophical position
"If human beings enjoyed the power of conceptual, as opposed to perceptual thought, there would be no difficulty in explaining how words signify generalities or universals. They would derive their significance from concepts that give us our understanding of classes or kinds.

But regarding human beings as deprived of conceptual thought poses a problem for Berkeley and Hume. They are compelled to say that when we use words that appear to have general significance, we are applying them to a number of perceived individuals indifferently: that is, without any difference in the meaning of the word thus applied. This amounts to saying that there is a certain sameness in the individual things that the speaker or writer recognizes.

Are they not contradicting themselves when they offer this explanation of the meaning of general terms or common nouns? If human beings do not have conceptual thought, how can they recognize the sameness that permits the nominalists to say that the same word can be applied indifferently in a number of individuals?

Are they not contradicting themselves? Should not nominalism -- the assertion that names have general significance even though human beings can have no understanding of kinds or classes -- be rejected?"

source for excerpt:
http://www.thegreatideas.org/apd-nomi.html

Stanford: "Aquinas' distinction between essence and existence was not long unchallenged even among the Scholastics, being rejected early by Scotus and much later by Suarez. Descartes and Leibniz also denied it, and Hume took the same view, though for reasons peculiar to his own impression-based epistemology. Thus, he argued that ‘the idea of existence must either be derived from a distinct impression, conjoined with every perception or object of our thought, or must be the very same with the idea of the perception or object’. (Treatise of Human Nature, Bk.I, Part II, sect. vi) There being nothing to indicate the presence of any impression at all that is ‘conjoined with every perception or object of our thought’, he concludes that there is no distinct impression from which the idea of existence is derived. Rather, it is ‘the very same with the idea of what we conceive to be existent’. Any one dissenting from this, suggests Hume, has the task of indicating just what is the distinct idea from which the idea of existence derives."

Ed: First of all, and as I said above, Aquinas' distinction (which could have been prevented if he had listened to Abelard, by the way) is invalid - it stems from reading Aristotle's "O" the wrong way (so the rest is all "water under the bridge"). But to say something positively negative about Hume (so that critics have something to "chew on"), I'll continue. Hume's "impression-based epistemology" and consequent nominalism allowed him to make the error of cleaving the tie from his "impressions" to his "relations of ideas." In short, things did not have any intentional existence for him, "man" was a being without the distinctive powers of the intellect, and objectivity and (along with it) communication with others, was thereby made impossible (for him; and it must have been awful lonely for the poor soul - being the only one that knows what you are talking about!).

Stanford: "Hume's contention that the idea of existence ‘makes no addition’ to the idea of any object was to be reaffirmed in Kant"

Ed: And Kant's claim that there would be 2 kinds of philosophy - that which came before him, and that which would come later - was unfortunately prophetic (enter Ontological Idealism). In the spirit of contempt for Kant so characteristic of objectivists, allow me to claim that this was a man whose very psychological continuity was not real (noumenal) to him. In other words, his internal impressions of things were not "really" his internal impressions of things, but merely impressions of his impressions.