Very nice introduction, Joe!
I'd like to continue your topic with a placement of Rand's theory of concepts among the contemporary schools. This rendition is concordant with your article.
These questions remain lively in philosophy today: What, in reality, corresponds to a particular concept in the mind? What is the relation of universals to concrete particulars? What is the ontological status of concepts, of universals?
Rand summarizes and critiques four traditional answers to those epistemological and metaphysical questions: extreme realism, moderate realism, nominalism, and conceptualism. The two realist schools regard concepts and universals as intrinsic, “as special existents unrelated to man’s consciousness—to be perceived by man directly,” though not by sensory means (53). The nominalist and conceptualist schools regard concepts and universals as subjective, “as products of man’s consciousness, unrelated to the facts of reality” (53).
In Rand’s theory, concepts are regarded as objective, “as produced by man’s consciousness in accordance with the facts of reality, as mental integrations of factual data computed by man—as products of a cognitive method of classification whose processes must by performed by man, but whose content is dictated by reality” (54).[i]
David Armstrong’s celebrated treatise on universals appeared in 1978. This watershed work classified all the traditional and contemporary schools (save Rand’s) under a great divide: realism and nominalism. Realism is divided into extreme and moderate realism, where these now include modern varieties, not only ancient and medieval varieties. The realist holds that in mind-independent reality, there are not only particulars, but universals. Nominalism is divided into predicate, concept, class, and resemblance nominalism. The nominalist holds that there is nothing in mind-independent reality besides particulars and that each particular is a single undifferentiated whole.[ii]
Under Armstrong’s characterization of realism and nominalism, we should say that Rand’s theory is neither. Rand holds that everything in mind-independent reality is a concrete particular. That includes recurring properties and relations. It includes the similarity relation (1, 10, 13–15). Unlike epistemologists in the moderate realist tradition, which includes Armstrong himself, Rand does not take for universals the multiple identical or similar entities, attributes, and actions that exist in mind-independent reality. The constitution of a universal requires also the membership relation and measurement relations in Rand’s view. These are not in mind-independent reality, though their bases are in mind-independent reality.[iii]
Rand’s theory is not realist, neither is it nominalist. In her view, the properties and relations on which universals and concepts are based—properties and relations such as identity, similarity, and having measurable dimensions—are concrete circumstances that occur independently of whether we grasp them and compose our concepts with them.
Armstrong’s division of the schools and his arguments concerning their virtues and failings is the main currency with which subsequent academically successful work on universals has been transacted. What Rand had called nominalism would now be called predicate nominalism. What she had called conceptualism would now be called concept nominalism.[iv]
Predicate nominalism proposes that a particular object is a stone just in case “is a stone” applies to it. To say that the object is an instance of a stone is only to contend that the word stone correctly means such objects as this one. There is nothing more to the universal stone than the meaningful word stone. The universal is merely the shadow of the word.
One objection to predicate nominalism is that stones are the kind stones before the predicate “is a stone” comes about. How could correctly saying of something that it is a stone be logically prior to the existence of the kind stones? It could not. Authentic predication is identification of identities (Boydstun 1991, 44–45). If identifying any and all concretes were logically prior to the existence of those concretes, then identifications of any and all concretes could be made before any such concretes existed. Like some monotheists, we might imagine such identifications prior to all concrete existence as residing in the divine understanding. This is not logically possible under Rand’s conception of logic. A wholly nonconcrete identifier has no identity and cannot exist (Rand 1957, 1016, 1035–37; 1966–67, 39, 79–82; 1974, 24–31). The existence and identity of some concretes is logically presupposed for authentic identifications. Most stones are among those preexisting concretes. Moreover, identification of stones designed by humans are not logically prior to the identities of these possible concretes. Identification in predication is not logically prior to identity.
Being specifically a stone is more than having “is a stone” said of it. Predicate nominalism ignores the metaphysical objectivity of universals. The universal said in the general term stone is an aspect of particular existents held in a certain way by conceptual consciousness.
Concept nominalism proposes that a particular object is a stone just in case it falls under the concept stone in the mind. But, surely, many particulars were stones before one obtained the concept stone subsuming those particulars. The argument just given against predicate nominalism goes through against concept nominalism.[v]
Predicate nominalism and concept nominalism do not countenance the circumstance that predicates and concepts are actions of consciousness holding as their object those aspects of existence that are under their correlate universals. They do not countenance universals. That is, they do not countenance the circumstance that the objects of predicates and concepts are aspects of existence held in a certain way by consciousness. These theories neglect universals and so neglect the sound anchorage of predicates and concepts to the world.
Extreme realism about universals, as Rand remarked, proposes that universals are mind-independent existents that are the archetypes in terms of which concretes may be characterized. The archetypes are to be “perceived by man directly, like any other kind of concrete existents, but perceived by some nonsensory or extrasensory means” (53). A nice modern example of this sort of view is Kurt Gödel’s favored view of the epistemology and ontology of sets, in the theoretical sense of the term sets.
Any collection of seventeen items is an instance of a certain single self-same finite set, which we may call S17. Gödel thought that just as we perceive by the senses some collection of concrete items that are seventeen in number, so the mind perceives purely intellectually the universal S17 of which that particular concrete collection is a member.
In Rand’s view, all consciousness is a specific sort of action on a content, and this action is made possible by a specific means. That would be so for a direct intellectual perception no less than for a direct sensory perception (78–82). It is so for direct sensory perception. A sensory perception is an action of consciousness having a content that is some aspect of concrete particular existents.
Gödel agreed that direct intellectual perception would require some definite means. He conjectured that there was some such means, so far unknown to us, but that it was independent of our sensory means of comprehending existence. To this day, the means of purely intellectual perception that Gödel envisioned remains undetected, not located, and unnecessary to suppose. We have available far less extravagant accounts of the objectivity of sets and our knowledge of them. These accounts invoke means that are at root sensory, and Rand’s is such an account.
Rand would have us analyze the concept length as an attribute of many kinds of objects (and of the spaces between them). The attribute and its objects are given in perception. We can mentally isolate the attribute and consider it apart from the particular objects in which it has been perceived. Our concept of seventeen inches is a particular magnitude of length applicable to innumerable different objects and regions of space (6–8, 10–11). The concept number and the concept set are demonstrably implicit in the concept seventeen inches, seventeen pears, or seventeen anything. Abstract entities like numbers and sets are traceable to sensory perception. They are ontologically and cognitively objective. There is no need to take them to be intrinsic, no need to take them to be mind-independent archetypes accessed by mysterious means. We can account for them more realistically than is done by extreme realism.
[I'll hold off on discussing the relation of Rand's theory to modern moderate realism. There is plenty of thought to absorb from this tablet thus far.]
[i] Rand’s definition of concepts as amended by Boydstun is that they are “mental integrations of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted or with the particular measurable forms of their common distinguishing characteristic(s) omitted” (Boydstun 2004, 285). (The italicized portion of this definition is Rand’s fundamental definition.) Boydstun observes two senses of universals and defines them as follows: “Universals as (abstractions that are) concepts are concept classes with their linear measure values omitted. . . . Universals as collections of potential concept-class members are recurrences on a linear order with their measurement values in place” (ibid., 286). Notice that in taking universals to be concept classes with or without their measurement values, universals are natural classes in the logicomathematical sense. These are not intrinsic in the ISO trichotomy; they are objective.
[ii] Armstrong 1978, 11–16, 48. Since the appearance of Armstrong’s book, a third major class of theories has grown up, and these are called trope theories. These hold that mind-independent reality includes no universals, but that in addition to concrete particulars such as tables, mind-independent reality includes tropes (abstract particulars) such as the temperature of a particular table. A trope in one concrete particular may resemble, but is never perfectly the same as, a trope in another concrete particular (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2002, 22–23). Rand’s is not a trope theory.
[iii] See further, Boydstun 2004.
[iv] See Armstrong 1978, 13–15.
v] Rand’s theory of universals is not class nominalism because in her view the classes that are designated by concepts are not arbitrary collections (1966–67, 13). Her theory of universals is not resemblance nominalism since her theory does not take resemblance, or similarity, as an unreduced primitive. Rand analyzes similarity in terms of identical measurable attributes possessed in various degrees by the things perceived as similar (13). Identity, differences, and differences of degree are the eminent primitives in Rand’s theory, and they are taken to be in the world independently of our cognitions concerning them. See also Register 2000, 211–12; Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1984, 15–18; Jetton 1998, 64–65; and Saint-André 2002.
Armstrong, David 1978. Nominalism and Realism. Volume 1 of Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: University Press.
Boydstun, Stephen 1991. Induction on Identity. Part 2. Objectivity 1(3):1-56.
---------. 2004. Universals and Measurement. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 5(2):271-305.
Den Uyl, Douglas, and Douglas Rasmussen 1984. Ayn Rand's Realism. In The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Jetton, Merlin 1998. Pursuing Similarity. Objectivity 2(6):41-130.
Rand, Ayn 1966-67. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd ed. Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff, editors. New York: NAL Books.
Register, Bryan 2000. The Universality and Employment of Concepts. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 1(2):211-44.
Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo 2004. Resemblance Nominalism. Oxford: University Press.
Saint-Andre, Peter 2002. Conceptualism in Rand and Abelard. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 4(1):123-40.
(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 8/26, 6:12am)