Concepts and Correspondence

[LovePrevails]

Stef has talked a fair bit about concepts and their correspondence to reality

eg. the concept of a tree corresponds to a real world  object while a forest is an aggregate of trees which we apply that concept to

a person is a thing, a government is a bunch of people who meet in a building and call themselves the government

 

Does this derrive from Randian philosophy? If so can someone direct me to relevant passages

I need this information for my dissertation on the aethetics of music

eg. beauty --- just a concept or corresponding to real world phenomena?

[TheRobin]

I have no idea in regards to the first question, but in regards to beauty, have you listened to FDR1547 The Philosophy of Truth and Beauty ? You might enjoy that one

[Joshua Alan Berens]

I recommend reading Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. It is pretty much what Stefan has to say ( I think), but not as anti-conceptual.

[huttnedu]

"eg. the concept of a tree corresponds to a real world  object while a forest is an aggregate of trees which we apply that concept to"

I understand what you are getting at because I was once in this confusing mentality myself. Confuse: con[/font]tradictory fusion of terms.

The issue can be solved easily by actually defining what we mean by particular terms.  Many consider these terms so basic that they need not define them, but without definition the door is left open to ambiguity and inadvertant confusion.

If we define these terms, then we understand the solutions.

Object: that which has shape.
Concept: relation between two or more objects
Exist: object with location

The reason why a TREE exists, while a FOREST does not, is that a tree has a shape of it's own.

Many respond, but a TREE is just a collection of cells and cells are collections of atoms.  This is irrelevant.  The cells may have their own shape, but they combine with others to form larger shapes and when we refer to the tree in reality, we refer only to the properties of the shape we call "tree". 

With this unambiguous definition of object and concept, we can understand WHY a forest does not exist, but a tree does.  What shape is "a" forest? Nobody can draw for you "a" forest.  A symbolic object on a map is the closest thing we have to "a" forest, whereas trees have their own shapes in existence.