Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies:
"The Continental Origins of Postmodernism"

Week 1: September 13-19 INTRODUCTION, ORGANIZATION

COMMENTS ON METHOD

Sent: Friday, September 17, 1999 11:16 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar Writing Notes

[From: William Thomas ]

SOME NOTES ON WRITING FOR THE CYBERSEMINAR
By William Thomas


The Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies has the basic purpose of developing
an Objectivist method of philosophical analysis. Of course this means that
cyberseminar participants are expected not only to be qualified scholars
and students, but to bring a systematic understanding of Objectivism to
their writing. Objectivism recognizes that any claim in philosophy has
systematic presuppositions and implications, and Objectivist analysis
therefore should pay attention to systematic issues as a central concern.

The Objectivist method entails certain concrete procedures, which I mention
here simply as a reminder:

-Know the purpose of your writing. What point are you trying make? What
are you trying to achieve? Is there a question you are trying to answer?
Is there an insight you want particularly to advance?

-Know your audience: who are you trying to address? Although we encourage
cyberseminar participants to develop their essays for wider circulation and
publication, participants should regard the cyberseminar as the primary
audience for their posts.

-Address essentials. Look for fundamental causes, implications, and
connections.

-Define terms. Make sure that both you and your readers know what you
mean. This is vital in dealing with highly abstract concepts, especially
when reading the Continental tradition. Definitions should generally be of
the species/genus form, and should be based on a recognition of the
Objectivist theory of concepts. In other words, one should differentiate
units in terms of essential characteristics along clear dimensions.


Write for the length you have in mind. Formal posts should develop a theme
that can be judiciously addressed in the space available. Because we will
be writing reviews of readings, and comments on those reviews, we will be
tempted to write in "laundry-list" fashion. Focusing on a theme or issue
is one way to keep our attention on essentials. Finding a theme that
allows you to address what is interesting about a reading challenges you to
identify the fundamentals.

Informal posts to the cyberseminar should be direct and focus on the
essentials of a certain point. They should be no longer than 500 words.
If you have several points to make about an essay or reading, make them in
separate posts. This has the added virtue of separating the threads of
your argument. One problem in written exchanges of ideas is that each
party may raise many points at once, making it difficult for the discussion
to stay focused. With a limit to the length of informal posts, we may be
able to avoid this problem to some degree.

Developing an Objectivist method of philosophical analysis is a challenge
to each of us, because it means attending to standards that are not always
prized in the academy, and which may not have been emphasized in our
earlier education. So I encourage each participant to view this seminar
not only as a place to approach a controversial literature on the basis of
shared principles, but as a place to develop and learn to apply the
principles by which one approaches it.

Sent: Friday, September 17, 1999 12:12 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Kelley on Method and Concept Formation

Notes on Method by David Kelley


Will Thomas has asked me to put down in writing, as a methodological
preface to this cyberseminar, some of the points I discussed in a session
on method at last summer's Advanced Seminar. I covered a good deal of
ground in that session, too much to write up at the moment. I have chosen
to concentrate here on one topic that I hope will prove useful for our
discussion. That topic is the need, in philosophical thinking, to
understand and use technical terms from the Objectivist theory of concepts.
The reason for its usefulness derives from the nature of philosophy as a
subject.

Philosophy as such does not involve any special method distinct from the
methods of thinking generally. But philosophy does place a heavy emphasis
on qualitative thought as opposed to quantitative reasoning. Philosophy is
distinct from the sciences in not relying on quantitative measurements or
experiments, just as mathematics is distinct from science in abstracting
from the qualitative natures of the things that bear quantitative
relationships to each other. Philosophy in a sense is the mirror image of
mathematics: it abstracts from all quantitative aspects of the phenomena it
studies, in order to establish the broadest possible qualitative
connections, whereas mathematics abstracts from all qualitative aspects of
nature in order to establish truths about quantity.

In philosophy, we are mostly concerned with types or categories of things,
and with their general features, actions, and relationships-e.g., with man
as such, or justice, or truth. This means that in philosophy there is a
very high premium on the valid use of concepts, on their precise derivation
and definition, because we do not have empirical measures or experiments to
test the conceptual links we are concerned with. This need is all the more
pressing because philosophical concepts are so abstract. Thus it is
important to have an explicit understanding of how concepts work and how
they are validated. In this respect, even specialists in other branches of
philosophy such as ethics must also have some familiarity with
epistemology.

Here are the key technical terms that, in my judgment, Objectivist
philosophers should be familiar with and capable of applying accurately to
their own conceptual thought: UNIT, CONTRAST OBJECT, CCD,
MEASUREMENT-OMMISSION, and the SOME-BUT-ANY-PRINCIPLE.

I assume that participants on this list are basically familiar with these
terms from Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. So I am going
to review the material quickly with an emphasis on how these terms can be
used in philosophy.

[MODERATOR'S NOTE: those who would like to refresh their grasp of IOE will
find a chapter-by-chapter analysis of that work on the web at:
http://www.olist.com/essays/sections/analysisandunderstanding.html.]

UNIT --
A unit is something regarded as a member of a class of similar objects, a
class that one isolates from some contrast objects that are seen as
dissimilar. Units are the things that the concept integrates by omitting
the measurements in respect of which they differ, allowing us to regard
them conceptually as identical. Thus the units are the referents of the
concept, the things it designates in reality. This means that the most
important thing we can know about a concept is what its units are: what
does it stand for in reality?

When Objectivists talk about the reduction of a concept, what they mean, at
least in part, is identifying clearly what its units are. This is not
always an easy task with highly abstract concepts, and often lies at the
heart of philosophical disputes. For example, there has been a lot of
discussion lately about whether the concept "virtue" refers to actions,
traits, cognitive states, principles, etc. In effect, the dispute is over
what kinds of things the units of "virtue" are. This is why Rand's
question-what are the facts of reality that give rise to this concept?-is
so important. To resolve issues like that regarding virtue, we need to ask:
what is it, exactly, that we observe in reality and need to conceptualize?

CONTRAST OBJECTS--
The relation between a concept and its units does not exist in isolation;
it is essentially dependent on the relationship between the units and the
contrast objects from which they are being distinguished. At the level of
our first abstractions from perceptual awareness, we do not have to
conceptualize these contrast objects: the awareness of similarity and
difference is perceptual. But in philosophy we are dealing with concepts
formed by many steps of abstraction from abstractions, and so we are able
to conceptualize the contrast objects.

Understanding a given concept, therefore, requires that we put it in the
context of the related concepts for those things in reality that contrast
with the units of the given concept. One of the key tools in philosophical
analysis is to ask of a given concept: "X-as opposed to what?" For example,
we gain a clearer understanding of why we need separate concepts of
"knowledge" and "truth" when we see that the first is contrasted with
ignorance whereas the second is contrasted with falsity.

CCD --
Uniting the units and the contrast objects is the Conceptual Common
Denominator: the variable dimension on which the units of a concept are
similar to each other and different from the contrast objects. Identifying
the CCD(s)-and there are normally more than one-allows us to understand
explicitly the nature of the contrast we are drawing between the units of a
concept and other things. In forming a definition, the CCD is involved in
identifying the genus and the relevant differentiae. For example, how do we
define "government"? Well, what are we contrasting governments with? Other
social institutions. What are the dimensions of institutions? They have
purposes; they employ various means in pursuit of those purposes; they have
internal structures of offices and roles, and rules for filling offices and
making decisions; they have effects of various kinds on people outside the
institution. These are the CCDs that enable us to form a definition to the
effect that government is an institution which pursues [some end] by means
of [certain actions].

MEASUREMENT OMMISSION --
Measurement-omission is the process by which we isolate the common
dimension uniting the units of a concept from their specific measurements
on that dimension. But to isolate is not to treat as nonexistent. Units are
existents that we regard first as similar, and then-once we have formed a
concept-as identical. But they are still existents; our cognitive method of
regarding them in a certain way does not change the fact that, as
existents, they are concrete and determinate, with specific values on each
of the variable dimensions we use to compare them. The relation between a
concept and its units is the same as that between a variable like length
and a particular length like three inches.

SOME-BUT-ANY-PRINCIPLE -- The some-but-any-principle (the units must have
some specific quantitative relations to each other, but may have any
relation) expresses this aspect of measurement-omission. It is the
principle that best expresses how the broader primacy of existence applies
to concepts. Our concepts involve a great deal of cognitive processing, but
the content of a concept is still existents. If you take away the units and
try to consider a concept simply as an idea in the head, you have no
content left, you have sheer cognitive absence. Philosophers are prone to
ignoring this principle and treating concepts as internal ideas detached
from their units. This is the view implicit in the distinction between
meaning and reference, connotation and denotation, etc.

In this cyberseminar, I propose that we pay careful attention to conceptual
methodology. One suggestion I have is to adopt the procedure that people
should feel free to interrupt the substantive discussion of postmodernism
with questions about how we are employing concepts. For example, I hope
that we will spend some time discussing what are the units of the term
"postmodernism," i.e., which ideas, theories, etc., fall under the concept,
as contrasted with which other ideas; and what are the units of the concept
postmoderns as a class of people; and what are the CCD's that underlie
these related concepts.

Another suggestion-actually, an implication of the foregoing-is that we
should watch carefully to see how the philosophers we are reading employ
concepts. We naturally have the impulse seek a clear interpretation of what
an author is saying. But if he does not ground his concepts in observation,
never specifies their units or contrast objects, or commits other
methodological sins, his statements may not have a definite meaning or
truth conditions. As anywhere else in life, charity in interpreting an
author is a secondary virtue, secondary to justice.


--David Kelley

[Moderator's note: David Kelley is on vacation for the next couple of
weeks, so will not be able to follow up personally on replies to this post
until that time. That's no reason for us not to take up his challenge to
define Postmodernism.]