Peikoff - Concept-Formation - Differentiation And Integration as the Means to a Unit-Perspective Flashcards
(46 cards)
For man, sensory material is only the first step of knowledge, the basic source of information.
Until he has conceptualized this information, man cannot …
DO ANYTHING WITH IT COGNITIVELY, nor can he act on it.
Human KNOWLEDGE and human ACTION are CONCEPTUAL phenomena.
Although concepts are built on percepts, they represent a PROFOUND development, a new scale of consciousness.
An animal knows only a handful of concretes: the relatively few trees, ponds, men, and the like it observes in its lifetime.
It has no power to go beyond its observations-to generalize, to identify natural laws, to hypothesize causal factors, or, therefore, to understand what it observes.
A man, by contrast, …
May observe no more (or even less) than an animal, but he can come to know and understand facts that far outstrip his limited observations.
==> He can know facts pertaining to ALL trees, EVERY pond and drop of water, the universal NATURE of man.
==> To man, as a result, the object of knowledge is not a narrow corner of a single planet, but the universe in all its immensity.
From the remote past to the distant future, and from the most minuscule (unperceivable) particles of physics to the farthest (unperceivable) galaxies of astronomy.
A similar contrast applies in the realm of ACTION:
An animal acts automatically on its perceptual data; it has no power to project alternative courses of behavior or long-range consequences.
==> Man chooses his values and actions by a process of thought, based ultimately on a philosophical view of existence.
==> He needs the guidance of abstract PRINCIPLES both to select his goals and to achieve them.
==> Because of its FORM of knowledge, an animal can do nothing but adapt itself to nature.
***Man (if he adheres to the metaphysically given) adapts nature to his own requirements.
A conceptual faculty, therefore, is a …
Powerful attribute.
It is an attribute that goes to the essence of a species, …
Determining its method of cognition, of action, of survival.
To understand man-and ANY human concern-one must understand …
CONCEPTS.
==> One must discover what they are, how they are formed, and how they are used, and often misused, in the quest for knowledge.
First, let us gain an overview of the NATURE of a conceptual consciousness.
Following Miss Rand, let us begin by tracing the development in man’s mind of the concept “existent”.
The implicit concept “existent” undergoes 3 stages of development in man’s mind.
1st stage ==> Child’s awareness of things or objects.
==> This represents the (implicit) concept “entity”.
2nd stage ==> Occurs when the child, although still on the PERCEPTUAL level, distinguish specific entities from one another; seeing the same object-at different times, he now recognizes that it is the same one.
==> This represents the implicit concept “identity”.
These 2 stages have counterparts in the animal world.
Animals have no concepts, not even implicit ones.
But the higher animals can perceive entities and can learn to recognize particular objects among them.
It is the 3rd stage that constitutes the GREAT COGNITIVE DIVIDE.
Having grasped the identities of particular entities, human beings can go on to a new step:
They grasp RELATIONSHIPS among these entities by grasping the similarities and differences of their identities.
A child can grasp that certain objects (eg two tables) resemble one another but differ from other objects (such as chairs or beds).
==> He can decide to consider the similar ones together, as a separate group.
==> At this point, he no longer views the objects as animals do: merely as distinct existents, each different from the others.
==> Now, he also regards objects as related by their RESEMBLANCES.
To change the example:
When you the reader direct your attention, say, to a person seated near you, you grasp …
Not just entity, and not just THIS entity vs that one over there, but:
This MAN.
==> This entity in relation to all others like him and in contrast to the other kinds of entities you know.
==> You grasp this entity as a member of a group of similar members.
The implicit concept represented by this stage of development is:
UNIT.
A unit is an EXISTENT regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members.
THIS is the KEY, the ENTRANCE TO THE CONCEPTUAL LEVEL OF MAN’S CONSCIOUSNESS:
THE ABILITY TO REGARD ENTITIES AS UNITS IS MAN’S DISTINCTIVE METHOD OF COGNITION.
WHICH OTHER LIVING SPECIES AS UNABLE TO FOLLOW.
An animal cannot organize its perceptual field.
It observes and reacts to objects in whatever order they happen to strike its consciousness.
But MAN …
Can break up the perceptual chaos by classifying concretes according to their resemblances.
Even though people, cats, trees, and automobiles are jumbled together in reality, a man can say, in effect:
“The similarities among people are so great and their differences from cats et al are so striking that I am going to segregate the people MENTALLY.
==> I will continue to regard each person as a separate ENTITY, but not as an unrelated entity.
==> I will regard each as a member of a group of similars, ie, as a UNIT.”
The result is a NEW SCALE of cognitive ability.
Given the unit-perspective, man can pursue knowledge …
PURPOSEFULLY.
==> He can set aside percepts unrelated to a particular cognitive endeavor and concentrate on those that are relevant.
==> He is able to SPECIALIZE INTELLECTUALLY.
In addition, since he treats the objects in the segregated group as UNITS of a single concept, he can …
Apply to ALL OF THEM the knowledge he gains by studying only a comparative handful (assuming he forms his concepts correctly).
==> HE IS CAPABLE OF INDUCTION.
When studying the unit-perspective, it is essential to grasp …
That in the world apart from man, THERE ARE NO UNITS.
==> There are only EXISTENTS. Separate, individual things with their properties and actions.
==> To view things as units is to adopt a HUMAN perspective on things.
**This does not mean a “SUBJECTIVE” perspective.
AR: Note that the concept “unit” involves an act of consciousness (a selective focus, a certain way of regarding things), BUT …
That is NOT an ARBITRARY creation of consciousness.
==> It is a METHOD of identification or classification according to attributes which a consciousness OBSERVES IN REALITY.
==> This method permits any number of classifications and cross-classifications.
==> 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.
Without the implicit concept of “unit”, man could not reach the CONCEPTUAL LEVEL of knowledge.
Without the same implicit concept, there is something else he could not do …
He could not COUNT, MEASURE, IDENTIFY QUANTITATIVE RELATIONSHIPS.
==> He could not enter the field of mathematics.
==> Thus the same (implicit) concept is the base and start of 2 fields:
THE CONCEPTUAL AND THE MATHEMATICAL.
==> This points to an essential connection between the 2 fields.
==> It suggests that concept-formation is in some way a MATHEMATICAL PROCESS.
Before pursuing this lead, however, LP wants to give an orderly description of the conscious processes men must perform in order to be able to regard entities as units.
I want to systematize the aspects of concept-formation to which we have already alluded:
2 main processes are involved:
Taking apart + putting together, or analysis + synthesis, or DIFFERENTIATION + INTEGRATION.
Differentiation is the process of …
Grasping differences, ie, of distinguishing one or more objects of awareness from the others.
Integration is the process of …
Uniting elements into an inseparable whole.
In order to move from the stage of sensation to that of perception, we first have …
To discriminate certain sensory qualities, separate them out of the initial chaos.
==> Then our brain integrates these qualities into ENTITIES, thereby enabling us to grasp, in ONE FRAME of consciousness, a complex body of data that was given to us at the outset as a series of discrete units across a span of time.
The same two processes occur in the movement from percepts to concepts.
In this case, however, the processes differ in form and are NOT performed for us AUTOMATICALLY by our brain.
We begin the formation of a concept by ISOLATING A GROUP OF CONCRETES.
We do this on the basis of OBSERVED SIMILARITIES that distinguish these concretes from the rest of our perceptual field.
==> The similarities that make possible our first differentiations, let me repeat, ARE OBSERVED ==> Available to our SENSES without the need of conceptual knowledge.
**At a higher stage of development, concepts are often necessary to identify similarities-eg between 2 philosophies or 2 political systems.
==> But the early similarities are perceptually given, both to (certain) animals and to men.
The distinctively HUMAN element in the above is our ability to …
ABSTRACT such similarities from the differences in which they are embedded.
==> An example is our ability to take out and consider separately the similar shape of a number of tables, setting aside their many differences in size, color, weight, and so on.
