- 2 years ago
23 December 2023 Locals Question
How do you accurately identify and create concepts?
Transcript: https://freedomain.com/identifying-and-creating-concepts-transcript/
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How do you accurately identify and create concepts?
Transcript: https://freedomain.com/identifying-and-creating-concepts-transcript/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Get my new series on the Truth About the French Revolution, access to the audiobook for my new book 'Peaceful Parenting,' StefBOT-AI, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and more!
See you soon!
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LearningTranscript
00:00 Alright, so other question that came out of locals was how do you accurately identify
00:07 and create concepts?
00:08 Great, great question.
00:11 One of my favorite questions, it's actually what I did very early.
00:16 Very first show I ever did with video was defining concepts, where concepts come from
00:20 and so on.
00:22 So it's a great question, very, very important.
00:25 So with operations of the mind, it's very important to distinguish between creation and
00:33 identification.
00:35 So creation is something new.
00:37 If you paint some fantastical robot for the News of the World album cover or something,
00:43 that's not a thing that exists, you're creating it.
00:46 Whereas if you are identifying something, then you are abstracting the essence of what
00:54 already is.
00:56 The creation versus identification.
00:59 Now concepts originate from not creation but identification.
01:06 So children have imaginary friends, we know they're not real because they're not empirical.
01:11 So we start by extracting concepts from what is.
01:18 And it's also important to understand the difference between an automatic and a willed
01:23 process.
01:25 So concepts describe two operations of the mind, one we share with animals and one we
01:31 don't.
01:32 The one we share with animals, of course, is that animals also are able to accurately
01:38 identify the essence of things and act accordingly.
01:41 A lion doesn't hunt a tree and zebras don't attempt to gnaw on clouds.
01:46 They accurately identify the animal and the grass as the source of its food, respectively,
01:52 and so on.
01:53 So animals are able to accurately identify the essence of things but not define those
02:00 things.
02:01 A lion knows the difference between a zebra and a tree but the lion cannot classify those
02:07 things in a conceptual way that can be communicated.
02:10 I mean, language, of course, is concept, right?
02:14 Every piece of language is a concept because language describes that which is in reality.
02:18 It is not the thing itself, right?
02:20 So the word tree is not a tree.
02:22 You can't eat the word food.
02:23 You can't have sex with the word vagina.
02:26 And so every language, every morpheme, every scrap of language is a concept, at least human
02:33 language with words.
02:34 I'm not talking about like soundless cries from babies or whale songs, although they
02:37 may be communicating things but probably not concepts, right?
02:41 So things have their essence and animals are able to accurately identify the essence of
02:49 things, but they're not able to describe in abstract terms the essence of those things.
02:57 In other words, they can identify, they cannot classify.
03:01 So animals know hierarchy but they don't know the term hierarchy, the concept hierarchy.
03:08 Animals know what is alive but they don't have a conceptual difference of various species.
03:14 They can't do it an evolutionary tree or anything like that, right?
03:17 So all animals identify essence but human beings do the twofer.
03:23 We identify the essence of the essence, right?
03:27 So we identify mammals but we also identify the essence of the mammal called the concept
03:33 mammal.
03:34 I know this is kind of stuff, tough stuff to do with language but we'll get through
03:37 it and it's really, really important stuff, really important stuff.
03:42 So we double essence, right?
03:45 All animals know the essence of things and you know, does it go down to protozoa?
03:50 I don't know but we can just talk about relatively higher multicellular animals, right?
03:57 The seagull needs to know the difference between an egg and a rock, right?
04:03 Even the hermit crab doesn't try and crawl inside a shrub or a rock or something, right?
04:08 So all animals need to be able to identify the essence of things and act accordingly
04:14 but human beings can define the essence of that essence in conceptual terms, right?
04:20 Animals know the difference between alive and not alive but they can't describe the
04:24 essence of being alive, right?
04:26 The properties of being alive, like motion, reproduction, consumption, excretion, all
04:30 that kind of stuff, right?
04:32 Animals get sick, they can't identify a virus, right?
04:35 So we understand that.
04:36 So human beings can do the essence of the essence.
04:38 Now we start with the essence like the animal.
04:42 I mean even a baby has the instinct to turn its head and suck on a nipple if the nipple
04:46 brushes its cheek or anything brushes its cheek for that matter.
04:51 And so babies are able to determine the essence of good for me, not good for me, positive
04:57 or negative, healthy or unhealthy based upon contentment or laughter or crying or so on,
05:04 right?
05:05 Babies can even, you know, know the difference between the satisfaction of wants that are
05:10 possible, the unsatisfaction of wants that are possible and the unsatisfaction of wants
05:14 that are impossible.
05:15 Babies will cry if they're proximate to something they can't get to but not if it's out of sight,
05:19 out of mind kind of thing.
05:21 So babies start with essence as all animals do and babies, you'd be shocked at how rapidly
05:26 they do this, but babies then go to the essence of the essence, right?
05:31 My daughter when she was very young, much less than a year old, looked at her elbow
05:35 and I said elbow and she said elbow, ebbo, ebbo as she said, right?
05:40 My wife kept a list of all the words she knew at various points in her life and it really
05:44 it's incredible, it's like this wild mind virus of language, it just cooks everywhere,
05:50 it's just amazing.
05:52 So human beings very quickly understand that words are the essence of the essence.
06:00 Words are the labels on the thing.
06:03 Things like I remember, I loved these books and I never could quite figure out why but
06:06 I loved these books as a kid, the Richard Scarry books, I don't know if they're even
06:10 popular at all anymore but it was, you know, cute little drawings of pictures and places
06:16 and people and things and so on and they had labels, right?
06:21 And this was a way of teaching people the essence of the essence.
06:24 So you look at an image of the thing, a little cute picture of a person and the reason why
06:30 I think it's cute for children and the reason why Dr. Seuss, although no, Dr. Seuss is like
06:35 a mental illness and a brain virus and Dr. Seuss has always struck me as extraordinarily
06:41 creepy and weird and nasty and blech, you know, it's just not good for me, you know,
06:48 maybe I'll sort of dig into why but I always really veered away from the Dr. Seuss stuff,
06:52 I thought that cat was weird, the people were weird, they didn't look human, they're like
06:57 half rodents with pig noses, like it's just freaky, weird, drug trip, blech, gross, brain
07:05 corrupting nonsense, I can't even tell you how much I veered away from and like if somebody
07:11 put a Dr. Seuss book in my hand I'd throw it to one side as a kid, it was just nasty.
07:16 But the Richard Scarry books were great, not scary, not scary.
07:20 And so you look at a Richard Scarry and he's taken away the unimportant details, right?
07:28 He's taken away the unimportant detail.
07:30 They were pictures of guys and they were pictures of men and animals and places and so on and
07:37 all the unimportant details were taken away.
07:41 And the reason why kids drawings tend to be more simplistic is because they're taking
07:46 away the unimportant details.
07:49 So of course Richard Scarry had fairly simply drawn people with arms, legs, hats and heads
07:56 and so on, and firemen and policemen and so on.
08:00 And he took away the inconsequential details, which is why children prefer drawings to photos,
08:07 because the photos have inconsequential details.
08:09 A man is a man, a man is a man, a man is a man whether he has that Kirk Douglas dimple
08:16 on his cheek or not.
08:17 A man is a man.
08:18 And so a photograph has too many details and doesn't provide the concepts.
08:24 The simplistic drawings for children are the essence of the thing that you're looking at
08:29 without inconsequential details.
08:32 A lion doesn't look at a zebra and say "whoa, those stripes are not identical to the first
08:38 zebra I ever saw and therefore I don't know what that thing is", right?
08:44 He says "oh, zebras have stripes.
08:46 The details of the stripes don't matter", right?
08:50 The details of the stripes don't matter.
08:53 They have stripes and that's what matters, that's what counts.
08:58 So by making pictures, and you can see this even in cave paintings from tens of thousands
09:04 of years ago, you are getting the essence of the essence and communicating it to others,
09:10 right?
09:11 So you have an advantage as a hunter if you can practice before the real thing.
09:17 Like if you're a kid hunter and you can practice hunting or know what you're hunting before
09:22 you actually see the thing, that's an advantage.
09:25 You'll get a couple of more successful hunts or kills out of that.
09:29 Which is why I assume that the cave paintings of hunting were there to teach children about
09:33 hunting so the children would be better prepared when they went out and wouldn't scare away
09:37 the game by being confused or would know to throw the spear at the right thing.
09:44 So human beings do the essence of the essence.
09:46 Now the first round essence, which is what the animals do, is involuntary and it is discovered
09:51 not invented.
09:52 Does that make sense?
09:54 A baby and a toddler are discovering their world.
09:58 It's an automatic process prior to language, right?
10:00 Language is not automatic.
10:02 We have a facility for it but it's not automatic as we know because the words are different
10:06 for each language, right?
10:07 So babies have the process of discovery and they discover the essence of things which
10:14 is why when a kid knows that chocolate tastes good and they see another piece of chocolate
10:19 they don't say "what the hell is that?"
10:21 They know it's a piece of chocolate and they'll try and get a hold of it.
10:25 So the essence of the things in the environment, the essential aspects with the discarding
10:33 of the superficial differences, right?
10:35 This is Aristotelian 101, right?
10:38 Essentials and superficials, right?
10:40 The essence and the instance of the essence.
10:43 And if you see, the first time you see a bald man or maybe even a bald woman you don't say
10:49 "what on earth is that?"
10:51 You say "that's a bald woman" or whatever.
10:54 So when I shaved my head, I worked in a daycare and I shaved my head and a very little kid
11:01 who I was friends with at the daycare looked at me coming in and he said "grow it back!"
11:07 He didn't say "who are you, stranger danger?"
11:09 Right?
11:10 He knew it was me without hair and he wanted me to have the hair back so I'd be more familiar
11:14 but he didn't sort of look at me and say "what the hell is that?
11:17 What is that, Eggman?"
11:19 So it is a process of discovery that is automatic, hardwired into our neurological and sense-based
11:26 system.
11:28 The discovery of essence is automatic.
11:31 The invention of language is not automatic.
11:37 But language is first discovered, right?
11:39 But it's discovered because it was invented, right?
11:41 So human beings don't invent rocks.
11:44 But human beings do invent the word "rock".
11:47 But a baby discovers rocks which weren't invented by human beings and then also discovers language
11:53 which was invented by human beings.
11:56 So discovering that which was not invented by human beings is essence-based and that's
12:00 all animals do.
12:02 But discovering empirically objective words for real objects for the baby, the word "tree"
12:13 means "tree".
12:14 And I remember my daughter's phase when we would buy her little stuffed animals and she'd
12:17 come up with names for them, she named them for things she could see.
12:21 Right?
12:22 Like you know the old story about the indigenous population of North America that they would
12:26 name their babies after what they saw when they, after the baby was first born.
12:30 My daughter named one of her stuffed snakes "tree", she named one of her stuffed animals
12:36 "window".
12:37 She was, she knew that language applied to things but she could not invent her own names
12:44 because the language remained empirical, not created.
12:47 So although it was created by other humans it's empirical to her and is fact-based as
12:52 the essence of the things that she was discovering in the world.
12:54 So the word "tree" was as empirical in fact based as the sense data called "tree" that
12:58 the word applied to or was attached to or described.
13:03 But of course we know that it's a living language, language is invented and there's no essential
13:07 reason in reality why black is the word "black" and not "noir" in French, right?
13:12 Or "blanc" is white in French, right?
13:14 It refers to the same thing.
13:16 And entire languages like Elvish, Klingon, Esperanto have been invented.
13:22 So children go through the process, automatic process of discovering the essence and then
13:28 they go through a language process of discovering that which is already discovered and then
13:35 the last stage is they go through the process of creating that which is neither empirical
13:41 nor discovered by others.
13:44 So this is when children start making up their own stories, they start making up their own
13:47 games.
13:48 My daughter of course, like most kids who are bright, started creating her own language
13:54 and then she started writing her own stories, she animated her own movies, so she is now
13:58 creating new things out of empirical things.
14:04 The new things are the new words, the new scenarios, the new characters, the new language,
14:08 the new dialogue, the new scenes that she's creating out of other things.
14:13 So there is the automatic discovery of the sense-based empiricism of the natural world
14:20 which you experience without language like animals do.
14:23 Then there is the discovery of empirical language which unlike reality is created by humans
14:31 and is not inherited from evolution, antiquity, geology, physics, nature, biology, whatever
14:36 you want to say, like the pre-existing world.
14:39 Now she realizes that she cannot create things but she can create ideas and this is where
14:48 ideas fly free of things.
14:52 So my daughter can create her stories and she can create characters and scenarios and
14:58 dialogue and movies and animation, she can create that but she can't create people.
15:06 She can draw a dragon, she cannot create a dragon.
15:10 I mean you can say well she can have babies later on but you know as a kid right?
15:14 So she learns that creativity exists in the realm of ideas, thoughts and arguments, it
15:20 does not exist in the realm of reality.
15:24 She can imagine things that are not in reality but they tend to be an amalgam of things that
15:30 are in reality.
15:31 So of course a dragon is a giant lizard with the wings of a bat or a bird or something
15:36 like that.
15:37 So she's taking things in reality, reassembling them into new patterns and distorting their
15:42 actual measurements right?
15:45 A centaur is a human being plus a horse right?
15:50 Does it wear its pants on the hind legs or the forelegs?
15:52 Nobody knows, the troubles I've seen.
15:55 So that process of moving from automatic empirical to willed empirical right?
16:04 From things to language.
16:06 Now there's no willed empirical, she can't will the creation of things in the real world,
16:11 she can't create rocks or dragons or walls by language but there is the willed non-empirical
16:19 which is language right?
16:21 She can create stories and consume stories but she can't create and consume things, you
16:27 can't will something into existence and then consume it.
16:31 You can't snap your fingers, have a sandwich appear before you out of nothing and then
16:36 eat it right?
16:38 So she learns that the second essence right?
16:43 Concept the essence squared right?
16:44 The essence of the essence.
16:46 The concept is derived from the essence but the concept is larger than the essence, the
16:53 concepts are larger than the things.
16:55 We can of course imagine that higher forms of animals may have grunts and sounds that
17:01 indicate things right?
17:03 Pass me the banana could be something that chimps grunt to each other, I don't know if
17:07 that's been studied or confirmed but I assume there's something similar to that.
17:11 Although I think only animals, I think only human beings when you point at something don't
17:15 look at your hand but look at what you're pointing at.
17:18 There's a sort of basic form of empathy trying to get inside your mind to look at what you're
17:21 looking at.
17:23 So we have evolved that concepts come from things but concepts can outstrip things, can
17:32 be larger than things.
17:33 Concepts can describe things that don't exist.
17:37 Concepts can describe things that don't exist.
17:41 Now one of the reasons that we have developed this ability is because it gives a significant
17:48 wealth and martial advantage.
17:50 So for instance the concept of property rights doesn't really exist for animals.
17:54 I know there's territory and so on but the concept of property rights doesn't exist for
17:58 animals.
17:59 If human beings accept property rights they flourish because human beings then will work
18:08 much harder to expand and extend the value of the property they have.
18:12 Like if you own your own land then you'll work much harder at producing food than if
18:15 your land is held in common.
18:17 It's sort of the pilgrims found and the Quakers found and the Calvinists found when they first
18:22 came to America and they held the land in common, starved to death, put the land in
18:28 private property and they ate.
18:32 The other thing of course is that if you can convince a slave that he is lesser than you
18:38 and you can break his spirit and his will by overwhelming him with concepts of inferiority
18:43 then it's much cheaper to own him and if you expend fewer resources owning slaves you have
18:49 more resources available for wealth and for swords and armor and food for your troops
18:56 and so on.
18:57 If you can convince people that they are inferior which is not empirical, right, just because
19:03 you lose a war doesn't mean you're fundamentally or substantially inferior.
19:07 So if you can convince your slaves that you own them, they're inferior, then and you break
19:13 their will and their spirit using concepts of victory and honor and dominance and superiority
19:19 and so on.
19:21 So if you can convince slaves or subjects or your harem that you are superior, they
19:28 are inferior and you break their will and their spirit, their spirit and will together,
19:33 you break their will and their spirit, then it's cheaper to own your slaves.
19:38 I mean the fact that there's 90% of the population in some places were slaves, well the 90% could
19:43 very easily overthrow everyone else unless they're broken in spirit which requires concepts
19:48 of superiority, inferiority and so on, right.
19:52 And so we develop concepts that go on beyond the material, right.
19:58 Like if I lose a tennis match to someone, if ever, if I lose a tennis match to someone
20:05 that doesn't mean I'm inferior.
20:08 I mean we could say if I consistently lose to someone I'm an inferior tennis player,
20:12 fair enough, right, but I'm not an inferior person because I could be much more virtuous,
20:16 I could be wealthier, I could be better at every other sport known to man, I could have
20:20 whatever, right, a happier marriage, I could be a better parent, right.
20:24 So universal inferiority is a concept not derived from empiricism but if it gets applied
20:30 to a subjected group of people, slaves, serfs and so on, then they're cheaper to own and
20:38 maintain and you have an evolutionary advantage.
20:41 It's tough to conquer other lands and other people if most of your resources are spent
20:46 controlling endless rebellions from your own slaves, right.
20:48 So you have to create superiority and inferiority and break their will and their spirit and
20:53 of course this is not exactly a practice that didn't make it through to modern times.
20:57 So there's an evolutionary advantage both in terms of productivity through property
21:01 rights which are a concept not in nature and inferiority superiority which is not in nature.
21:09 So you get more wealth and you have to apply less wealth, like you get more wealth through
21:13 property rights and you have to apply less wealth to the control of your slaves if you
21:19 have the ability to derive and inflict concepts beyond the sense data and the material, right,
21:27 which is why the king has to convince his subjects that obeying the king is the same
21:32 as obeying God and God will give them a reward in heaven, right, that makes it far cheaper
21:39 to maintain your subjects, your citizens, your serfs, your slaves and this may be to
21:45 some degree to the benefit of even them because if they rebel maybe they end up with the American
21:52 Revolution but most often you would end up with the French Revolution which would, you
21:55 know, be pretty negative as you could sort of listen to more of this if you want in my
21:59 presentation on the French Revolution which you can get at freedomain.locals.com if you
22:04 subscribe, which I would appreciate if you did and if you could do that I would be very
22:07 grateful.
22:08 So there's an evolutionary advantage to going beyond the first essence of things automatic
22:15 to the second essence of things which is language.
22:18 Language which is confined only to that which is can never inflict abstract concepts like
22:23 subjugation, can never have abstract concepts like justice or property rights or virtue
22:30 and so on, right, responsibility and obligation and so on.
22:35 So it's a great tool for growing wealth and subjugating the masses and those which advanced
22:40 in this generally tended to do better in expanding and controlling the masses and producing wealth.
22:46 Carthage versus Rome of course is a big example of that, the trade versus the martial city.
22:53 And even the concept of the law, right, the law and justice and innocence and guilt and
23:00 so on and punishment tends to reduce blood feuds which allows for the most stable generation
23:06 of rules within society, right.
23:10 So in terms of concepts understanding these differentiations and distinctions, right,
23:15 the automatic development of the essence which is sense-based we share with the animals to
23:21 the willed learning of concepts that are empirical both in terms of language and the things it
23:27 describes to that which is not just discovered but invented.
23:33 And there's two forms of invention.
23:35 One is long-term like language which is collective and the other is individual like individual
23:40 story.
23:41 So Stephen King writes a story, he's invented that story but he's invented that story using
23:44 language that was invented by many many other people.
23:47 He's just rearranged it in a form that is both horrifying and pleasing to a lot of masochists
23:52 I guess.
23:53 So I hope that helps delineate the way that concepts work and they're just immensely powerful.
24:00 And of course like all things that are immensely powerful they have good and bad aspects to
24:07 them, right.
24:08 They can, like a knife, right, you can use it to get food or you can use it to stab a
24:13 guy.
24:14 So this is the power of them and what makes them so unique to humanity.
24:18 So I hope that helps.
24:19 Thank you so much of course for your support.
24:20 Free domain dot com slash donate.
24:23 Lots of love.
24:24 Take care my friends.
24:25 I'll talk to you soon.
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