RoR: Forum

My entry for this term, though edited by the site owners, still made it into the Merriam-Webster Online Open Dictionary! Hooray!

misintegrate (verb) : to integrate improperly or to understand poorly
Thus emotions may skew our attention to external objects or cause us to misintegrate perceptual awareness, thus leading to poor judgments. —Bryan Register, The Logic and Validity of Emotional Appeal in Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory: What is an Emotion?, May 1, 1999
Submitted by: Luke Setzer from Florida on Oct. 07, 2008 09:33

My submission to the Urban Dictionary Online has not yet seen publication, however.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 10/10, 7:52am)

Post 1

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - 5:46am

Finally, even the Urban Dictionary approved my entry!

Yo! Fo shizzle!

1. misintegrate
to integrate perceptual concretes along false common denominators (such as racism or mysticism) so as to form false concepts and propositions (such as the Aryan Master Race or the Second Coming of Christ)
"Thus emotions may skew our attention to external objects or cause us to misintegrate perceptual awareness, thus leading to poor judgments." -- Bryan Register, "The Logic and Validity of Emotional Appeal in Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory: What is an Emotion?"

Post 2

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - 10:40am

Very interesting! It is a new word to me.
I wonder about saying an integration of percepts can directly produce a proposition. Is that so?

Post 3

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 4:33am

You would have to integrate the concepts first before integrating propositions. Misintegrating percepts into anti-concepts and then stringing anti-concepts together into propositions lead to disturbing results. See Ayn Rand's essay "'Extremism,'" or the Art of Smearing" in Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal for a full exposition. I found this link a possible aid.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 1/21, 4:34am)

Post 4

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 11:41am

In the case of "extremism," the valid concept is being misused. This isn't a case of misintegration, in the sense of forming a concept by integrating percepts that don't belong together. Right?

Post 5

Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 6:54am

See this link from The Ayn Rand Lexicon for elucidation.

That said, "extremism" probably qualifies as disintegration rather than misintegration since the latter uses an overarching but false and floating abstraction while the former is more concete-bound.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 1/22, 6:56am)

Post 6

Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 9:22am

I get it. "Extreme" is the legitimate concept. "Extremism" is a neologism without definition. Interesting that "extremism" and "polarization" are equivalent in their (unstated) context, politics.
Above, you said mysticism and racism were somehow false conceptual common denominators, can you explain that? Thanks.

Post 7

Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 9:28am

Mysticism is the idea that one can know things by non-sensory, non-rational means. For example, "You will have to take my word that I talk to the ghost of Elvis because I have 'the gift' and you do not." Once you accept that as true, whole systems of thought can be built around it, e.g. religion.

Racism is the idea that qualities of moral worth depend upon one's visible genetic makeup. For example, "Clearly the Aryan Race with its fair skin and hair constitutes the superior master race when compared to the mud people of Africa or the dirty Jews. Just look at the difference! Can't you see it?" This is particularly insidious because it refers to concretes and thus appeals to the concrete-bound mentality, which seems all too prevalent at times.

Both of these examples harken back to a pre-rational era of humanity.

Post 8

Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 1:48pm

"Racism" is defined as race-based prejudice, that in a very old Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Fifth Edition.) I notice with interest that this and related terms are not present in the O.E.D.
If mere prejudice can be the grounds of racism, and not moral inferiority or superiority, the term would be legitimate. But besides that, as the term for the phenomenon of people's beliefs that race is linked to morality, it is a necessary and legitimate concept, isn't it?

The same argument can be made for "mysticism." There are systems of belief that use some supernatural authority or methodology as their source. We need a concept for this kind of system, Rand certainly found the term useful.

Would you have us abandon these concepts? Or refrain from using them in certain contexts, perhaps...

Post 9

Friday, January 23, 2009 - 4:32am