humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 20, 6:31 pm, David Schwartz wrote:

> 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.

David, I was trying to understand what YOU mean. What's
the damn difference between correspondence and
reference...TO YOU?


> 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.

This is all fine, is basic Rand and is largely correct IMO.

Also irrelevant.


> I'm not sure whether or not you want to
> call these "correspondences" or not.

Do YOU, goddammit??? Is that what correspondence is
TO YOU, the sum total of all experiences and integrations
which lead to the formation of a concept?

And if so, could you explain its usage in "a
correspondence theory of truth," like Rand
called hers? Are you saying it means a
recognition of the method of formation of
concepts?

I would say it means something about the concepts
that are thereby formed.


> Just as the concept friend can "correspond" to enemies as well

In what manner? Because those non-friends were part of
the integrative process?

What do YOU mean when you say "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".

It sure ain't, but it's starting to look like that's what you mean.


> > 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.

Any semi-brief non-dodge answer will do.


> > > 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.

There is no disagreement here about whether consciousness
exists, and I'm not a big fan of counterfactuals to try to make
points. So I'll just ask...what the hell does "dependent" mean
here, in any manner other than that everything existing is
"dependent" on everything else?

That can't be your meaning, since you seem to agree that
the purpose of concepts is distinguishing X from non-X. So
what do you mean by "dependent" here?


> 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.

What is its meaning, to you?


> 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.

Great...so what's its meaning, in a fashion that not everything
else means the same thing? What does "friend" refer to, that
other concepts don't?

Tip...it's the set of friends, without regard to the particular
instances, extant or not.

You seem to agree about this, but I don't see how if you
don't think there's any extant set but for the conceptualization
of it. I can see saying that about imaginary friends, but I
can't see saying it about the ones that really exist.

They exist, as OBJECTS. That they fall within your classification
of "friend," is indeed up to you, just as you say. In this case,
the /property/ "friend" is literally conceptually created, but even
then, the damn set it references IS NOT. That you can add
imaginary friends who don't really exist is a testament to our
conceptual powers, BUT IT DOESN'T TOUCH THE EXTANT SET.

Get it? The extant set IS HOW IT IS, totally irrespective of any
conceptualization. That you can subsequently conceptualize
that set as "friend" DOES NOT TOUCH the extant set. It is in
this manner that the set IS NOT "dependent" upon
conceptualization, only how it's referenced is that.


> > 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).

Right...so its existence is, as you admit, independent of its
conceptualization. You have been arguing exactly the
opposite, throughout.


> 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.

Maybe if you ever pin down what correspondence means to
you, we might make sense of this.


> 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?

Not very. How different are the PEOPLE?


> 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.)

Yeah, but notice what a river he'll be up, if he doesn't catch
on to the difference. You keep talking about the concepts,
when you know the issue is about the referents of the concepts.


> I don't have a concept to distinguish "friendship between real people"
> versus "friendship between fictional people". Why should I?

If you were constantly trying to bang fictional girls, it
might make sense! Besides, apparently you do have
a conceptual string to differentiate them.


> 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.

Ahem. So are the people themselves any different?


[snip]


> > 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.

May I make a guess...are you in your 40s? 43-48 would
be my guess, exclusively from this paragraph. Am I close?


> But otherwise, absolutely, existence is prior to cognition.

Do you even realize that this completely contradicts
your previous paragraph?

So is it "absolutely" or not?


> 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.

Shit...you're only about an inch away, but what an inch it is.

You're busy cogitating that you're not cogitating about anything.


jk