Chapter 3 THE IMPORTANCE OF CORRECT DEFINITIONS * On the Importance of Correct Definitions * How to Make a Definition Some approaches to defining a few interesting concepts * Certainty * Probability * Expense * To Be * References * Envy * Instinct * Luck * Standard vs Purpose * Anarchy * Nonsense * On the Importance of Correct Definitions "Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea with a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols. When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions - rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic- mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not- sanely." ......Robert Heinlein. A definition is a statement designed to "identify the specific meaning of a concept, isolate the facts of reality to which the concept refers and of which the concept is a mental integration." (Jan63 - 3) It serves "to keep a concept distinct from all others, to keep it connected to a specific group of existents" (Jul67 - 9), or, as Harry Browne so aptly put it: "to draw a sharp line between what IS a certain thing and what isnt." "The purpose of defining one's terms is to afford oneself the inestimable benefit of knowing what one is talking about." (Jan63 - 3) (References are to various issues of THE OBJECTIVIST NEWSLETTER.) If one does not scrupulously afford oneself this benefit, the facts of reality will, sooner or later, correct one's error. Obviously, there are some mistaken definitions that will be corrected immediately as they are acted upon. If, for example, you define a hot stove as a chair, your mistake will be immediately and warmly chastised. There are other mistakes, however, that will not be so quickly righted. If you improperly identify an onion seed as a carrot seed, your mistake will not be corrected for weeks or even months. In the meantime you will have dug your garden, planted your seed, fertilized it, watered it, and carefully cultivated it until harvest time. Only then will you uncover your error, but by then you will have wasted a great deal of time and energy in the pursuit of an improper course of action, and you will then also be stuck with the consequences of your mistake: eating onions instead of carrots until next spring. Some mistakes will take even longer to be rectified. The more abstract the concept, the less immediately will reality show you your error. If you incorrectly define marriage, the tragic result may be a divorce court - but this "setting right" of the situation may not come about until after years of domestic suffering. If you mistakenly define the principles of business management, you will eventually find yourself in a bankruptcy court; but again, it may take decades of toil and effort before the facts of reality catch up with you. And finally, if a group of men establishing a new country mistakenly define the practice of freedom, two centuries later their grandchildren may wake up one morning to find themselves in a concentration camp. * How to Make a Definition The basic structure of a definition was first identified by Aristotle, and it was he who gave us the proper procedure for making a definition: Place the class of entity you wish to define in a wider class called a genus, all members of which share common characteristics. (e.g., Man is a living being.) Then add a qualification to the statement of inclusion which differentiates the class to be defined from all the other members of the wider class. (Man is a rational living being.) For a precise and detailed account of the cognitive process involved, see Ayn Rand's INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY. There are several corollary rules for carrying out this procedure: Rule of Equivalence: A definition must be true of every member of the class being defined and only of members of that class. Rule of Fundamentality: A definition must refer to the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the thing being defined. The definitive characteristic must be that which is a cause, not an effect: that which makes a thing what it is and differentiates it from all other things - that without which it would not be the kind of thing which it is. A definition must distinguish between names and entities. The essences of entities are not arbitrary, as are the verbal labels by which we symbolize the entities. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet - because giving the rose another name would not make it another entity. Rule of Non-Circularity: A definition must not contain any concept which, to be understood, presupposes the definition. An example of circularity is: "Democracy is a system of government which uses democratic procedures." Rule of Non-Negativity: A definition must tell what the thing IS rather than what it is NOT. Exceptions are those concepts which are inherently negative in meaning, such as orphan or bachelor. But note that a positive concept is always presupposed by such negative terms. Rule of Context: All known distinguishing aspects must be considered. The definition must include all presently held knowledge. Rule of Clarity: A definition must not be obscure, metaphorical or poetic but must clearly state a literal and exact meaning. For example: "Truth is beauty" is a nice poetic statement, but it is NOT a definition. Many words are vague insofar as they apply to characteristics which may be possessed in varying degrees. It is impossible to draw a sharp line between those who are bald and those who are not. It is impossible to define precisely the concept of baldness. But the characteristic according to which people distinguish between those who are bald and those who are not IS open to a precise definition: it is the presence or the absence of hair on the head of a person. This is a clear and unambiguous characteristic of which the presence or absence is to be established by observation and to be expressed by propositions about existence. What is vague is merely the determination of the point at which non-baldness turns into baldness. People may disagree with regard to the determination of this point, but their disagreement refers merely to the interpretation of the convention that attaches a certain meaning to the word baldness. A false definition of Rational Selfishness is that everything everyone does every moment throughout life is selfish. All this does is define "selfishness" in a way that is not helpful at all, because it makes "selfishness" all- inclusive. A word is a tool for delimiting one area of thought from others. The word becomes useless if it is defined to include everything. The word "everything" already serves that purpose quite well; we don't need a synonym. Ostensive definitions are those which establish directly, by an appeal to experience, the relationship between a word and that to which it refers. Ostensive definitions define primaries which cannot be placed into a genus and differentiated, such as sensory primaries like color, roughness, bitterness, and warmth; or metaphysical primaries such as Existence. One cannot place Existence into a wider class of entities. One of the worst consequences of faulty definitions is that you will be confused every time you have to compare concepts. If you haven't conceptualized according to fundamentals, but instead by some accidental characteristic, then when you need to compare them, for the purpose of making moral or ethical judgements, you'll be in real trouble. A definition is not an arbitrary construct, but the identification of a natural phenomenon. We cannot arbitrarily define "gravity". It is a phenomenon we discover. Once we understand it we can then define the WORD "gravity" based on the discovery. Defining a term is not a matter of defining it for MYself or for YOURself, but of making an identification that leads to UNDERSTANDING the phenomenon that has been defined. * Certainty Certainty is a state of mind in which a person perceives a correlation between his mental images and Reality. It is a judgement made within the context of a state of knowledge. The knowledge need not be total - but must be sufficient to ensure that the judgement is valid. Observe that this is a philosophically neutral definition: An objectivist achieves a state of certainty when he has modified his mental images to bring them into accord with reality. A subjectivist achieves certainty when he has modified his perceived reality to bring it into accord with his mental images. Observe also that this definition allows for degrees of certainty - certainty need not be absolute: the closer the degree of correlation between the mental image and reality, the higher the degree of certainty experienced. Absolute certainty would correspond to a complete congruency between the image and reality. And the complete absence of certainty would correspond to a state wherein there was no mental image at all of the aspect of reality under consideration - a state of complete ignorance. Certainty is not an absolute prerequisite to life's activities. One can go through life without being certain of many things: You are uncertain every time you go hunting or fishing. You are uncertain when you plant a garden, when you look for a word in the dictionary (one of my grumbles is in not finding the word at all - or finding it accompanied by a grossly inadequate definition, such as the word "certainty"), when you go to town - with or without your umbrella (although in this last example, I am tempted to say that there is a kind of "negative certainty" involved!) A "reasonable expectation" is sufficient to cope with a vast number of situations. Are there things about which we MUST be certain? Yes, I believe there are two such things: 1. The Axiomatic Concepts. These are the foundation of human knowledge, and thus are the foundation of all subsets of human knowledge, including certainty. As Aristotle remarked, in considering Axiomatic Concepts: "For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis.... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all." 2. Rationality - the ability of the human mind to perceive and understand Reality. One of the facts of reality relevant to this context is the fact that human beings are neither omniscient nor infallible, and thus to ground the concept of certainty on either or both of these notions is to demand something that does not exist in reality. In the real world, certainty is rarely a Boolean phenomenon; it is seldom the case that you have either absolute certainty or total doubt about something. Those who attempt to impose such an alternative on the idea of certainty are implicitly assuming that a human being must be both omniscient and infallible: to have ABSOLUTE certainty about something, one must have TOTAL knowledge of that thing. And to have absolute CERTAINTY, there must be no room for the slightest error in one's judgement. Neither omniscience nor infallibility are attributes possessed by human beings. The statement "There is no such thing as absolute certainty" - or any variation of this statement - manifests the fallacy of self-exclusion: The statement itself is intended to be absolutely certain. Kant divided the world into two domains: the domain of phenomena and the domain of noumena. Phenomena, he claimed, are events as perceived by the human mind - they are sensations. Noumena are the causes of phenomena - they are the so-called things-in-themselves, the objects that really exist. Kant concluded that human beings can never know the noumena directly: noumena are the sources of the signals that act on our senses, and we can perceive only the signals, not the sources. According to Kant, then, we cannot ever really know anything definite about the noumena. But when he says "We cannot know anything definite about them" he is saying something definite about them: that their essential nature is such as to preclude our having definite knowledge of that nature. But Kant's statement itself explicitly asserts such definite knowledge, and is thus another example of the fallacy of self-exclusion. The notion of certainty has its roots in the process of concept formation. As Rand has observed "A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted." To form a concept, a man does not have to make the particular measurements - nor even know how to make the measurements - "he merely has to observe the element of similarity," and recognize that "the relevant measurements must exist in SOME quantity, but may exist in ANY quantity." "Similarity is grasped perceptually; in observing it, man is not and does not have to be aware of the fact that it involves a matter of measurement. It is the task of science to identify that fact." (Quotes are from INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY, Chapter 2, which contains an extended account of the nature of the measurement process.) Note that "similarity is grasped perceptually" and that the integration is of percepts. As David Kelley has pointed out, the percepts are DIRECT links between Existence and Consciousness. There can be no doubt about the reality of the percepts: they are indeed certain. And here, in the percepts, is the foundation of certainty. The integration of the percepts is the first active behavior that a consciousness performs (the receipt of sensations and their integration into percepts are essentially passive processes). So, when I integrate the percepts, my certainty lies in the knowledge that the percepts do indeed possess the distinguishing characteristic (this knowledge is given to me perceptually). But I do not need, and sometimes cannot ever achieve, the certainty of knowing EXACTLY what the particular measurements are. Here are some examples: When I go hunting - my certainty lies in the knowledge that food animals do exist and can be obtained through my efforts. My uncertainty lies in not knowing the precise location of the animals and not knowing the exact actions needed to obtain them. When I plant a garden - my certainty lies in the knowledge that food plants can be grown. My uncertainty lies in not knowing exactly what conditions are required to grow a particular plant in a particular place. When I look for a word in the dictionary - my certainty lies in the knowledge that words exist and that they can be defined. My uncertainty lies in not knowing if the particular word I want is in a particular place and has been given a suitable definition. When I go to town - I am certain that it does rain. But I am uncertain as to whether it will rain at a particular location at a particular time. This notion applies even in the realm of Quantum Physics: I am certain that electrons emit photons, but I am uncertain about the emission of a photon by a particular electron at a particular time. (It is the Probability Amplitude that describes this emission.) With regard to Rationality - my certainty lies in the knowledge that my mind can function as an accurate identifier of reality. I may be uncertain about the accuracy of a particular application of my mind to a specific identification. My safety lies in carefully reducing the specific identification to the precise perceptual concretes upon which it is founded. The percepts are certain, and if I have correctly built my identification upon them then it too will be certain. "Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none ABSOLUTELY certain." Now we can see the flaw in this contention: the word "statements" implicitly subsumes both aspects of concept-formation. When the "statements" are about the particular measureable characteristics of phenomena, then they are open to uncertainty. But when the "statements" are integrated percepts of the phenomena, then they are certain. "If certainty is unattainable, how can we decide how close we are to it, which is what a probability estimate is?" In this question the word "certainty" means "infallably exact precision in measurement." There is no such thing - the world just isn't built this way. This is an improper definition of "certainty." A probability estimate is fundamentally not a statement about reality but a statement about my knowledge of reality. reality is not probable - it is fact. "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." When Bertrand Russell said this, he should have put "I think" at the end of it. The flaw in Russell's remark lies in the implicit meaning of "certain of themselves." The fools and fanatics cause trouble not because of their certainty, but because of their social behavior. It is wrong to blame certainty per se for the choices and actions of people who assert certainty. That's rather like blaming guns for murder. Guns don't kill people - people kill people. Certainty "creates confidence in one's course of action as an already established fact. It provides the basis for progress into new areas unencountered previously." This notion is critically important to the development of man's cognitive behavior; the basic certainty of the elemental act of conceptualizing lies at the root of all his subsequent conscious behavior. A great number of man's concepts are derived not directly from perceptual concretes, but from the integration of previously created concepts (the process Rand calls "abstraction from abstractions). If the previously created concepts were not "already established facts" there would be no way to build reliably upon them, and man would be restricted to living a cognitive life not much higher than that of the lesser animals: restricted to a merely perceptual awareness of the world. I believe it is possible for a person to live without certainty - but only without his own inner certainty. Doing so, he goes through life as an intellectual, moral and spiritual parasite: a parasite on other people who DO possess certainty. As Branden has observed, the fundamental act of a human being is the choice "to think - or not to think." The act of concept-formation lies at the base of all other human behavior. The conviction of certainty regarding this act is a prerequisite to all thought. If you don't think, you can stay alive only by being a parasite on the thinking of others. * Probability There is a critical distinction to be made between two uses of the idea "Probable." 1. It is used to express a judgement about the occurrence of a phenomenon: "I'll probably go to town this afternoon." "The ice-cream parlor will quite likely be out of strawberry again." "The next president will surely be a varmint criminal." "It is more probable that the next president will be a varmint criminal than that the ice-cream parlor will be out of strawberry." In each case what is expressed is a surmise or conjecture - a statement of my judgement about a situation. Such judgements are not precisely quantifiable, but are combinations of my ignorance, my partial knowledge, and my extrapolations from previous experience. 2. It is used to express knowledge about the frequency of occurrence of a phenomenon: "The probability of a coin falling heads-up is 1/2" "The probability of dice showing 12 is 1/36" "It is more probable that a coin will fall heads-up than that the dice will show 12." These cases are not statements of uncertainty. They are statements expressing exact and certain knowledge - certain because the statements are based directly on perceptual observations of the facts of Reality. They are descriptions of reality with as much underlying certainty as the statement "2 plus 2 make 4." No probability can be attached to a unique event; that is, an event that belongs to a class where there is only one member and no prior ones. * Expense "At taxpayers' expense" That is a frequently-heard term nowadays, and whether the word used is "expense" or "cost" the same meaning is intended. I believe it is a wrong meaning, and that the term is a cruel misrepresentation of the facts. The statement has two implications: That a transfer of wealth has occurred from person A to person B in the form of a payment for phenomenon C. That if C had not occurred, the payment would have remained in the possession of A. Neither of these implications is factual. Consider a specific example: The government contracts with Daddy Warbucks Corp. to provide the army with a new gun. The gun turns out to be poorly designed and will not work. During a congressional hearing to investigate the multi-million dollar boondoggle, congressman Flatula is heard to declare "This whole mess was done at taxpayers' expense!" The implication is that the Taxpayer paid Daddy Warbucks for the New Gun. But this is not the case. Daddy Warbucks received payment from the accounting office of the Department of Defense - he got a cheque from the government for $Mega. And too, if this particular contract had never been issued (and the New Gun had never been manufactured) the $Mega would have stayed, not in the pocket of the Taxpayer but in the coffers of the government. The whole scheme was done at government expense. The fact that the government got its money by robbing a selected group of people does not in ANY way implicate those people in the actions of the government. Consider a personal example: If you are robbed of $100 by a hoodlum, and the hoodlum subsequently uses part of that money to finance an abortion for his girlfriend, can it be said that this abortion occurred at your expense? Did you participate in the abortion? No, you did not. It was performed by a quack doctor of whose very existence you were completely unaware. Did you finance the abortion? No, you did not. The doctor received his payment from the hoodlum. The doctor didn't know where the hoodlum got the money, or even that you exist. Did you condone the abortion? No, you did not. You didn't even KNOW about the abortion! There is absolutely no reasonable way, in either of these examples, that the third party (the taxpayer in the first case, and you personally in the second case) can be construed as a participant, unless he knows about and sanctions the behavior of the other two parties. And here we see the underlying motivation of those who use this phrase "at taxpayers' expense": the desire to impose upon YOU personally the moral culpability of sanctioning the behavior of the government and the people who deal with it. What they say, in effect, is that because you are the victim of an act of robbery (taxation) you are therefore responsible morally for the manner in which the robber uses the money he has stolen from you. This same viciousness can be observed in another assertion I encounter frequently when I chide people for using the word "we" when referring to the actions of the government. They reply with "Well, you're a taxpayer too!" The fact that I am a victim is being used as justification for assigning to me moral culpability for the behavior of the thief. I call this the GRATUITOUS INCULPATION fallacy. You might chastise me for attributing to the people who use these arguments a motivation they do not intend. And by and large you are right: they do not intend to perpetrate an evil, but that IN FACT is what they are doing. I call this the "Road to Hell" syndrome. In fact, their intentions do not matter; it is only the consequences of their behavior that matter - the consequences that actually have an effect in the world. The most wicked people are those who sincerely believe that what they are doing is good. If you wish to know the true nature of someone who uses the statements and arguments I presented above, merely describe to him why those statements and arguments are in fact evil. And then see if he relinquishes them. * To Be Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary: "to have an objective existence: have reality or actuality." Here, "to be" is defined by referring to the concept of existence. This is a more-or-less adequate definition of the term, but it does not convey the genuine fundamentality of the idea of existence. Consider what the function of a definition is. A proper definition will describe the fundamental nature of a term - in the process using other terms which are fundamental to the first term. For example: "orphan" would be defined by using the term "parent". But "parent" could easily be defined without reference to the term "orphan" at all, because the idea of "parent" is fundamental to the idea of "orphan" - not the other way around. To define "parent" we must refer to terms that are fundamental to it, such as "sexually mature lifeform" - and so on, down the ladder of fundamentality. Thus we define Z in terms of Y. Y in terms of X. X in terms of W... D in terms of C. C in terms of B. B in terms of A. But do we then define A in terms of Z? No. The attic rests on the main floor. The main floor rests on the basement. The basement rests on the foundation. And the foundation rests on bedrock. But the bedrock does not rest on the attic. Sooner or later, an ultimate fundamentality is reached. In building a house, that ultimate fundamentality is the bedrock. In physics, that ultimate fundamentality is the First Law of Thermodynamics. In epistemology that ultimate fundamentality is known as an Axiomatic Concept. An axiomatic concept can be described, it can be explained, but it cannot be "defined" simply because there are no terms which are fundamental to it. An axiomatic concept is a term which MUST (by virtue of its very nature) be accepted and used in the act of defining any and all other terms. Indeed, one of the primary distinguishing characteristics of an axiomatic concept is the fact that it must be accepted and used even in any attempt to deny it! It is inescapable. The three axiomatic concepts are Existence, Identity, and Consciousness. That the world exists is an idea which is inherent, implicitly or explicitly, in ALL other ideas. That things which exist are what they are (have an identity) is also such an idea. And that YOU have a consciousness, which recognizes (or, if you wish, denies) this existence and identity, is another fundamental - which you accept and use in the process of any cognitive endeavor. Which is to say that you accept and use your consciousness in any act of consciousness. "To be" is a verbal expression which asserts the fact of existence. * References Diogenes: That you are a man, he will know when he sees you; whether a good or bad one, he will know if he has any skill in discerning the good and the bad. But if he has none, he will never know, though I write to him a thousand times. A reference is a method of obtaining information about another person. A, being unacquainted with C, and wishing to make a judgement about him, has two means of doing so: by direct observation and consultation or by referring to another person's observations, in the form of a reference provided by B, an acquaintance of C. B, however, may or may not have a previous acquaintance with A. If A knows B then there is some justification in his asking B for information about C, because A will have made an estimate of the validity of B's powers of observation and judgement, and will therefore be able to make some valuation of the reference. If A does not know B then it is certainly not advisable for him to place much, if any, weight on the information provided by B. After all, C is certainly not going to select a reference source who would say bad things about him. If A accepts a reference from a person with whom he is not acquainted then he has gained no useful information about C, because the most undesirable people can usually provide the most impeccable references. To ask for a reference is, at best, of very limited usefulness; at worst it is an intellectual cop-out. If I want to know what kind of person you are I will make my own observations and base upon them my own judgement, I won't pass the buck to someone else. * Envy The motive of a man who is willing to make himself worse off in order to bring another down to his level. Do not fool yourself by thinking that altruists are motivated by compassion for the suffering: they are motivated by hatred for the successful. To be rational is to be successful in dealing with reality. Thus is explained much of the existing hatred for rationality. But altruism has no power over its victims except by their own consent, which means: by their acceptance of guilt for the crime of living and of producing values - of being successful. The envy today's intellectuals feel is not the relatively healthy desire to have what others have, but an ugly pleasure in seeing their betters brought down. Envy is not the desire to emulate the achievements of others, nor is it primarily the desire to steal other people's values; it is, rather, the desire to wipe out these values. The envier has little interest in the transfer of anything of value from the other person's possession to his own. He would like to see the other person robbed, dispossessed, stripped, humiliated or hurt. In a free market, where men earn their wealth and distinction by trading their skills and achievements, a man's long-range failure, like his long-range success, is an objective reflection of his ability. It is precisely this inexorable rule of capitalism - "to each according to his ability" - that wounds the self-esteem of the envious mediocrity and engenders the widespread hatred for capitalism. Their ideas are not ideas in favor of anything, but are a means of expressing their hatred of knowldge, of achievement, of happiness, of man - their political views are an expression of their more fundamental spiritual nihilism. * Instinct 70/Aug/10 The unnamed but automatized connections in the mind. AS-1013 62/Oct/43 An unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without the involvment of reason. Scientists who use the term "instinct" never define it, and rarely even attempt to do so. The impression I get from all their usages is that instinct means "behavior for which I am not able to attribute any other cause." Nathaniel Branden (PSE-23): There is no such thing. There are 3 categories in terms of which animal behavior can be explained: 1. Actions which are reflexes. 2. Actions which are guided directly by an animal's pleasure-pain sensory apparatus and which involve the faculty of consciousness but not a process of learning - such as moving toward warmth. 3. Actions which are the result of learning. Behavior that has not been traced to one of these categories or to some combination of them has not been explained. Hormones, while not exercising absolute control over behavior, can assert a substantial influence over behavior. If the creature's volitional consciousness then cooperates with this influence, the result could be the manifestation of complex behavior. Another thing to consider is the propensity for self-assertion: a baby grasps because that is the natural function- potential of its hand, just as eyes see, legs walk, and a mind thinks. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, April 1992, contains a fascinating essay by Ronald Melzack entitled PHANTOM LIMBS. This essay presents the best case I have ever seen for a phenomenon that might be called "instinct" although surprisingly, the word "instinct" does not appear in the essay. ************* from Melzack ******** People who have lost an arm or a leg often perceive the limb as though it is still there. Such a a phantom can feel wet, or it can itch, which can be extremely distressing, although scratching the apparent site of discomfort can actually relieve the annoyance sometimes. Some paraplegics complain that their legs make continuous cycling movements, producing painful fatigue, even though the patient's actual legs are lying immobile on the bed. The brain contains a network of neurons, that, in addition to responding to sensory stimulation, continuously generates a characteristic pattern of impulses indicating that the body is intact and unequivocally one's own. If such a matrix operated in the absence of sensory inputs from the periphery of the body, it would create the impression of having a limb even when that limb has been removed. Phantom seeing and hearing, like phantom limbs, are also generated by the brain in the absence of sensory input. People whose vision has been impaired by cataracts or by the loss of a portion of the visual processing system in the brain sometimes report highly detailed visual experiences. Phantom sights and sounds occur when the brain loses its normal input from a sensory system. In the absence of input, cells in the central nervous system become more active. The brain's intrinsic mechanisms transform that neuronal activity into meaningful experiences. The parietal lobe has been shown to be essential to the sense of self - to the recognition of the self and to the evaluation of sensory signals. Patients who have suffered a lesion of the parietal lobe in one hemisphere have been known to push one of their own legs out of a hospital bed because they were convinced it belonged to a stranger. When sensory signals from the periphery reach the brain, they pass through several systems in parallel. As the signals are analyzed, information about them is shared among the various systems and converted into an integrated output, which is sent to other parts of the brain. Somewhere in the brain the output is transformed into a conscious perception. As a system analyzes sensory information, it imprints its characteristic neurosignature on the output. The specific neurosignature of an individual would be determined by the pattern of connectivity among neurons in the system - that is, by such factors as which neurons are connected to one another and by the number, types and strengths of the synapses. When sensory input activates two brain cells simultaneously, synapses between the cells form stronger connections. Eventually the process gives rise to whole assemblies of linked neurons, so that a signal going into one part of an assembly spreads through the rest, even if the assembly extends across broad areas of the brain. The connections of this neuromatrix are primarily determined not by experience but by the genes. The matrix, though, could later be sculpted by experience, which would add or delete, strengthen or weaken, existing synapses. I think the matrix is largely prewired because many people who were born without an arm or a leg do nonetheless experience a vivid phantom. Under normal circumstances, then, the myriad qualities of sensation people experience emerge from variations in sensory input. This input is both analyzed and shaped into complex experiences of sensation and self by the larely prewired neuromatrix. Yet even in the absence of external stimuli, much the same range of experiences can be generated by other signals passing through the neuromatrix - such as those produced by the spontaneous firing of neurons in the matrix itself or the spinal cord or the periphery. Regardless of the source of the input to the matrix, the result would be the same: rapid spread of the signals throughout the matrix and perception of a limb located within a unitary self, even when the actual limb is gone. ******** end of Melzak ******* It seems my Tabula is not entirely Rasa. * Luck Luck means to prosper or succeed through chance or good fortune. Lucky, fortunate, happy, providential, mean meeting with unforseen success. Lucky stresses the agency of chance in bringing about a favorable result; fortunate suggests being rewarded beyond one's deserts; happy combines the implications of lucky and fortunate with stress on being blessed; providential more definitely implies the help or intervention of a higher power. "Every scientist hopes for the good fortune to recognize one of nature's suprises and the good sense to make the most out of it." ... Robert Hazen "There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe. 'Good luck' follows careful preparation; 'bad luck' comes from sloppiness." ... Heinlein "Luck favors the prepared mind." ... Pasteur When Napoleon's eagle eye flashed down the list of officers proposed for promotion to generals, he used to scribble in the margin of a name: "Is he lucky?" * Standard vs Purpose I observe some confusion in the minds of many Objectivists regarding the proper applicaton of these two concepts. I will see if I can throw some light on the situation. A standard is the basis upon which rests or which makes possible the existence of a purpose. The two things, while related, are not identical and should not be confused with one another. Consider a house. Its standard is the foundation which it is built upon. Its purpose is the function of providing shelter for people. You can see that it could not fulfill its purpose without having its standard; but observe also that its standard is not the reason for its existence. Now consider a man. His standard is his life - the life which is manifested in his biological mechanism. (To be specific, it is the ability to effect a temporary and local decrease in entropy through the use of chemical reactions catalyzed by nucleic acid molecules.) His purpose is also his life - but here "life" is used in a different sense, meaning the process of achieving values. I will refer to these two different aspects of life by the terms B-life and V- life. In the Objectivist writings there is considerable emphaisis on the idea that "man's life is the standard of values." (Here is meant B-life.) There is also much emphasis placed on the idea that "man's life qua man" (V-life) is the purpose of man's existence. Unfortunately, there is too little attention paid to differentiating between the two quite different aspects of the term "life" which are being considered. The result is that many people think in terms of B-lfe when they should be using the term V-life. An example is the man who claims that, if faced with a terrible situation in which he had to choose between saving his own life or saving his wife's (or child's) life, he would, according to the principles of Objectivism, have to save his own life. Because, after all, Obectivism tells him that his own biological existence is the most important value he can hold, doesn't it? This is surely not what Objectivism implies, nor is it what Rand means to say. You will recall Galt's words to Dagny at the time when he is about to be captured: "But if they get the slightest suspicion of what we are to each other, they will have you on a torture rack.... At the first mention of a threat to you, I will kill myself.... I do not care to see you enduring a drawn-out murder. There will be no values for me to seek after that - and I do not care to exist without values." This same motivation can be observed in the final scenes of Hugo's TOILERS OF THE SEA. Both Galt and Gilliatt realized quite well that his purpose in living is the achievement of values, not merely the continuance of his physical biological processes. * Anarchy An anarchic society is not a Utopia in which the inititation of violence is impossible. Rather, it is a society which does not institutionalize the initiation of force and in which there are means for dealing with aggression justly when it does occur. The absence of government does not mean the absence of violence. It simply means the absence of an official, legal, institutionalized tool for its imposition. It is not a form of statism. Anarchists don't want to impose their value system on anyone else. It's not terrorism. The agent of the government - the cop who wears a gun to scare you into obeying him - is the terrorist. Governments threaten to punish anyone who defies State power, and therefore the State really amounts to an institution of terror. Here is what anarchists believe: Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, almost always cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness. No true reform is possible that leaves government intact. Appeals to a government for a redress of grievances, even when acted upon, only increase the supposed legitimacy of the government's acts, and add therefore to its amassed power. Government will be abolished when its subjects cease to grant it legitimacy. Voting is not an expression of power, but an admission of powerlessness, since it cannot do otherwise than reaffirm the government's supposed legitimacy. Every person must have the right to make all decisions about his or her own life. All moralistic meddling in the private affairs of freely-acting persons is unjustified. Behavior which does not affect uninvolved persons is nobody's business but the participants'. We are not bound by constitutions or agreements made by our ancestors. Any constitution, contract, or agreement that purports to bind unborn generations - or in fact anyone other than the actual parties to it - is a despicable falsehood and a presumptuous fraud. We are free agents liable only for such as we ourselves undertake. All governments survive on theft and extortion, called taxation. All governments force their decrees on the people, and command obedience under theat of punishment. The principal outrages of history have been committed by governments, while every advancement of thought, every betterment in the human condition, has come about through the pratices of voluntary cooperation and individual initiative. The principle of government, which is force, is opposed to the free exercise of our ability to think, act and cooperate. Whenever government is established, it causes more harm than it forestalls. Under the guise of protecting people from crime and violence, governments not only do not eradicate random, individual crime, but they institutionalize such varieties as censorship, taxation-theft and war. All governments continually enlarge upon and extend their powers; under government, the rights of individuals continually diminish. Anarchism is the philosophy that favors a free society organized along lines of voluntary cooperation, individual liberty, and mutual aid. * Nonsense That which is expressed in a way that I find incomprehensible. In considering what is nonsense I began with the notion that nonsense is a statement that rests upon or manifests a denial of the Law of Identity. This defines it as a Metaphysical concept. But then, how can I identify nonsense? Oh sure, some things I can see immediately as nonsense. They are a subset of the things that I can understand. But what of other things which I cannot understand? Like the Tensor Calculus - might that be nonsense? I have no way of determining. And the proposition cannot be resolved by reference to higher level intellects either. For example: The IDEA of my little computer would have been nonsense to Archimedes (I suppose the computer itself would have been magic to him), thus it is clear that a perfectly sensible idea can be regarded as nonsense - even to someone endowed with the highest degree of intellectual ability. Therefore, if it is considered as a metaphysical concept, there is no way that nonsense can be precisely identified. This leads me to believe that it can only be accurately considered as an epistemological concept. It then becomes relative to the person who is making the identification. Thus, just as one man's meat is another man's poison, one man's sense can be another man's nonsense. As the Red Queen said: "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"