humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 20, 3:28 pm, Jim Klein wrote:
> On Mar 20, 1:54 pm, David Schwartz wrote:

> > In this context, correspondence is the link between the concept and
> > what the concept refers to.

> Interesting. So what's the difference between correspondence
> and reference, to you?

Those are both sufficiently ambiguous words that you really can't
answer that question without seeing how someone uses them. I have seen
"correspondence" used to indicate only the known referents and
"reference" used to refer to all possible referents. I've also seen
the reverse.

I think it may be helpful to consider another distinction that you may
be trying to get at here, or possibly not. The concept "friend"
requires understanding of non-friends as well. The concept of a
"friend" is largely in contradistinction to a person who is not a
friend, or even an enemy.

Normal formation of the concept "friend" to some extent references
experiences with non-friends. I'm not sure whether or not you want to
call these "correspondences" or not.

Just as the concept friend can "correspond" to enemies as well (as
they're things in the world that one experiences to form the concept
and knowledge of which is embedded in the concept) even though they
are not friends. Maybe this is what you mean by "correspondence"
versus "reference".

> And what is the nature of that "link," exactly?

The nature of the link is complex, and has both non-cognitive and
cognitive aspects. I'm not sure what kind of answer you want.

> > Correspondence is not all or nothing, and not all correspondences are
> > equally good from a cognitive utility point of view.

> Yeahbut you seem to be saying that they're all equal from
> a metaphysical POV. Surely you acknowledge a difference
> between your friend that exists and one that doesn't.

Certainly, and this gets back to what you might have meant by the
correspondence versus reference issue. The "friend that doesn't exist"
is a cognitive referent of friend, as 'friend' is a concept formed
from other concepts. You can follow such a cognitive chain, and it
will always eventually lead outside of concepts to percepts to
whatever was the object of the percepts.

> What is that difference, exactly? According to your theory,
> neither friend "really exists" and our conceptualization is
> just a model of something...except that we can't even call
> it "something" since even that has no meaning except for
> its "cognitive utility."

The term "really exists" is your term. If it exists dependent on
consciousness, and consciousness really exists (which it does), then
it really exists. Consciousness is just as real as anything else.

AS for it having "no meaning except for its cognitive utility", this a
mis-statement of my position. Though its meaning arises from cognitive
utility, its meaning is not its cognitive utility.

In other words, I form the concept "friend" rather than "random
assortment of friends and green bits of fluff" out of cognitive
utility. But the *meaning* of friend is not its cognitive utility.

> If a giant pulsar zapped all consciousness but not any objects,
> are you actually saying there'd be no difference between the
> two objects that had both been referred to as "friend"?

There would be a huge difference. One would no longer have any
existence at all as far as I can see. The things the other one used to
correspond to would still exist (though not as referents).

> Just
> offhand, it seems like "One's there; one isn't," is a pretty big
> difference.

I agree. But then again, is there a big difference between a concept
formed from other concepts and a concept formed from percepts? Both
have percepts at the root. It's just links in the chain.

Even the friend that does not exist, as a concept, arises from
knowledge about friends that do exist, and to an extent corresponds to
them.

I can talk about Han Solo as a friend of Princess Leia even though
neither of them existed. Their friendship, at least, is not so very
different between the friendship of two existent people, so far as my
concept of it is concerned anyway.

Ask yourself this -- how different is my concept of friend, so far as
two people are concerned, if those two people are fictional rather
than two actual people I've never met? In both cases, my experience of
their friendship can be much the same. I may not even be sure the two
people were real or not. (Consider someone who read Romeo and Juliet
without being told whether it was a fictional account or a historical
one.)

> Indeed, even in the absence of the pulsar, I'd say
> that's such a big difference, that it readily lends itself to
> "cognitive utility." Not only do you disagree, but apparently
> you disagree so much that you don't even have a concept to
> distinguish the two!

I don't have a concept to distinguish "friendship between real people"
versus "friendship between fictional people". Why should I? The
friendship is the same relationship. As far as the friendship itself
is concerned in my cognition, it's between my concepts of those two
people, and my concepts of fictional people is not much different from
my concepts of real people.

So to get from the "friendship" to the warm bodies, you must go
through a few steps. In those steps, the difference between real
people and fictional people is quite attenuated. So much so, that the
love between Romeo and Juliet, at least to me, is no different from
the love between Brad and Jennnifer. Okay, bad example.

> In fact, if I take you literally, you don't even think there IS
> a difference between the two. If that's wrong, then tell me
> what the difference is. All you've got so far is, "We model one
> that exists; we model the other that it doesn't." So I
> understand the difference between the models. Now tell
> me the difference between the two things we're modelling.

> Me, I'd say, "One exists; one doesn't." But you can't say that
> since that's just a /model/ distinction to you. It really reads,
> "Our model says one exists; our model says the other doesn't."
> That's fine and all, but how the hell do you distinguish between
> OBJECTS that exist, versus that don't?

I agree with you. The difference is that one exists and the other
doesn't. But for this purpose, that makes little difference.

As far as the love is concerned, if I read about the love between two
people and model that love cognitively, it really makes no difference
if they're two people who actually existed in the past, actually exist
now, or are entirely fictional. I can model their love cognitively and
manipulate that model.

Note that my *concept* of love must correspond (in the weakest sense)
to actual experiences of actual objects that I've had. But these need
not be the referents. (As 'friend' can correspond to experiences of
enemies by contradistinction, though enemies are not referents of the
concept 'friend'.)

> Plus, since you've
> bought into this silliness, you also think they're equivalent in
> that NEITHER "really" exists. You have taken a moderately
> interesting point and extrapolated it beyond belief, not to
> mention beyond sanity.

That is *your* silliness. You pretend you're talking about something,
but you are only talking about something sometimes. I don't pretend
Han Solo exists just because I have a concept of him. But I don't
pretend my concept 'Han Solo' is independent of any experiences I've
had with things that exist.

> You've already explained how an object relies on our
> consciousness for its existence. Does this go to
> existence itself? Absent consciousness, is there also
> no such thing as existence IYO?

No, at least I think that's extraordinary unlikely. The only way I can
imagine that that could possibly be true, and I'm not even sure it's
possible, is if literally everything is conscious on some level. That
seems fantastically improbable at minimum and quite likely entirely
impossible. But I cannot absolutely rule it out. In that case, there
could be no existence without consciousness.

But otherwise, absolutely, existence is prior to cognition. But
cognition creates things that we later cogitate about as well.
Something outside is always at the root of any such hierarchy, but you
may have to walk the chain pretty far to get to it.

DS