Concept formation
Concept formation is the process by which a mind integrates two or more units into a single concept. Objectivism holds that it proceeds in two steps — differentiating the units from what they are being distinguished from, then integrating them by omitting their particular measurements — and that following the process correctly is what makes the resulting concept objective rather than arbitrary.
“The process of concept-formation consists of mentally isolating two or more existents by means of their distinguishing characteristic, and retaining this characteristic while omitting their particular measurements.”
~ Ayn Rand, "Concept-Formation", Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Step one: differentiation
The first step is to isolate certain things as belonging together, apart from others.
Most theories of concept formation begin with similarity. Rand's begins with difference, and the order matters. At the perceptual level everything differs from everything else, so similarity noticed in isolation gives no guidance — anything resembles anything in some respect. What a mind actually notices is that some differences are smaller than others, and it notices this by contrast.
Two tables differ from each other by less than either differs from a chair. Set against the chair, the tables fall together. The chair is not incidental to the process; it is what makes the grouping possible. Rand's term for the wider category the contrast is drawn within is the conceptual common denominator: the characteristic, possessed by both the units and the things they are being distinguished from, in terms of which the comparison is made. Tables and chairs are both furniture with a shape and a function, and that shared ground is what lets the difference between them register as a difference in kind.
Step two: integration by measurement omission
Rand defined similarity as the relationship between two or more existents that possess the same characteristic in different measure or degree. Similarity, on this account, is quantitative.
The difference between one table and another can be reached by stretching: change the height, the width, the number of supports, the material, and one becomes the other. The difference between a table and a chair cannot be reached that way within the same purpose, because a change of degree has become a change of kind.
The second step exploits this. The mind retains the distinguishing characteristic and omits the particular measurements, on the principle that the measurements must exist in some quantity but may exist in any. What is left is a single mental unit covering an unlimited number of cases:
- Retained: a flat level surface, supports.
- Omitted: height, width, weight, colour, material, number of legs.
- Result: a concept applying to every table, including ones nobody has built yet.
This is measurement omission, and it is the specific mechanism by which an open-ended abstraction is produced from a finite number of observations. See Measurement and Induction.
Definition, and the word
A concept is completed by two further acts.
It is defined by identifying its essential characteristic — the one on which the greatest number of its other characteristics depend, within the context of the person's knowledge. Because the context can grow, definitions can be revised; because the essentials are a matter of fact rather than choice, a properly formed later definition expands the earlier one rather than contradicting it. See Fundamental and Rule of Fundamentality.
It is given a word, which serves as a perceptual symbol for the integration. The word is not the concept, but without it the concept cannot be held in mind as a single unit, filed, or used in further thought. This is why Objectivism treats language as a cognitive necessity rather than a social convenience.
Abstraction from abstractions
The same process runs again on concepts already formed. "Table" and "chair" are integrated into "furniture"; "furniture" and other man-made objects into "artifact". Narrower concepts are reached by subdivision in the other direction.
The result is a hierarchy. Every concept has a place in it and a route down to the perceptual level, and that route is what gives it meaning. A concept used without one is a floating abstraction — the word retained, the connection to reality lost. See Rationalism.
Errors
Concept formation can go wrong, and Objectivism names the recurring ways:
- An invalid concept groups things that are not genuinely similar in the respect claimed, or packages incompatible things under one term so that accepting part of it drags in the rest. See Package-Deal.
- A floating abstraction has no path back to concretes.
- A Frozen Abstraction substitutes one particular case for the wider abstraction it belongs to.
- Concrete-boundness is the failure to generalise: treating a concept as if it named only the instances one has actually met.
- Context-dropping applies a concept outside the conditions under which it was formed. Its most serious form is the stolen concept — using a concept while denying something it depends on, as in an argument against reason that must itself be reasoned. See Context.
Rand's Razor is the standard offered against multiplying concepts without need: concepts are not to be formed beyond necessity, and must be resolvable into their irreducible primaries.
Objectivism distinguishes error from evasion. An honest mistake in this process is a failure of knowledge. A deliberate refusal to look — to complete an integration one suspects will be unwelcome — is treated as a moral failing rather than a cognitive one, because it is chosen. See Volition and Ethics.
Common misunderstandings
- That the process is a psychological description of how children happen to learn. It is an account of what has to be done for a concept to be valid. A person may reach a correct concept without having analysed the steps, and the analysis is what tells him whether he did.
- That measurement omission requires measuring anything. No numbers are taken. The claim is that the omitted characteristics are measurable — that they vary in degree along some dimension — not that the mind computes them.
- That starting from differences is a quibble about ordering. It is what keeps the theory out of nominalism. If similarity were noticed first and freely, any grouping would be as good as any other; contrast against a common denominator is what makes some groupings correct.
- That contextual definitions make knowledge unstable. The referents do not change when the definition improves. "Man" picked out the same beings before and after anyone knew about DNA.
See also
- Concept · Unit · Measurement omission · Conceptual Common Denominator
- Hierarchy · Fundamental · Rand's Razor · Context
- Invalid Concept · Floating Abstraction · Frozen Abstraction · Package-Deal · Fallacy of the stolen concept
- Reason · Logic · Induction · Objectivity · Knowledge
- Nominalism · Realism · Intrinsicism · Rationalism · Empiricism
- Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology — the primary source
Discussion
References
- Rand, Ayn. "Cognition and Measurement", "Concept-Formation", "Abstraction from Abstractions" and "Definitions", Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The Objectivist, 1967.
- Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapters 3 and 4.
External links
| Epistemology Topics |
|---|
| Senses | Consciousness | Volition | Concepts: Unit, Concept-Formation |
| Objectivity | Knowledge: Context, Hierarchy | Reason: Certainty, Truth, the Arbitrary | Emotions |