So long as men remain ignorant of their basic mental process, they have no answer to the charge leveled by mysticism and skepticism alike, that their mental content is some form of revelation or invention detached from reality.
Consciousness is a faculty of discovering identity. This is so because existence has primacy; it sets the terms and consciousness obeys.
Our knowledge grows in stages, and we organize at each stage only the facts that are available.
Intellectual clarity is not given to man automatically.
A definition cannot list all the characteristics of the units; such a catalog would be too large to retain. Instead, a definition identifies a concept's units by specifying their essential characteristics. The essential characteristic(s) is the fundamental characteristic(s) which makes the units the kind of existents they are and differentiates them from all other known existents.
“No matter what his emotions, a sane man retains the power to face facts. If an emotion is overwhelming, he retains the power to recognize this and to defer cognition until he can establish a calmer mood.”
“The subjectivist denies that there is any such thing as ‘the truth’…On his view truth varies from consciousness to consciousness…”
“No one can think or perceive for another man. If reality, without your help, does not convince a person of the self-evident, he has abdicated reason and cannot be dealt with any further.”
Axiomatic concepts are starting points of knowledge…on which all proofs depend…they must be used and accepted by everyone, including those who attack them.
To Ayn Rand, philosophy is the fundamental factor in human life; it is the basic force that shapes the mind and character of men and the destiny of nations. It shapes them for good or for evil, depending on the kind of philosophy men accept.
For a philosophic idea to function properly as a guide, one must know the full system to which it belongs.
Logic requires noncontradictory identification within the full context of one's knowledge, methodically surveyed; it requires an understanding of the fact that knowledge is a unity, not a realm of splintered propositions or disconnected subdivisions.
Existence, consciousness, identity are presupposed by every statement and by every concept, including the concept of disagreement.
The thinker who accepts the absolutism of the metaphysically given recognizes that it is his responsibility to conform to the universe, not the other way around.
Whenever men expect reality to conform to their wish simply because it is their wish, they are doomed to metaphysical disappointment.
Nature is existence regarded as a system of interconnected entities governed by law; it is the universe of entities acting and interacting in accordance with their identities.
One must know the idea's relationship to all the other ideas that give it context, definition, application, proof. One must know all this not as a theoretical end in itself, but for practical purposes; one must know it to be able to rely on an idea, to make rational use of it, and ultimately, to live.
Being implicit from the beginning, existence, consciousness, and identity are outside the province of proof. Proof is the derivation of a conclusion from antecedent knowledge, and nothing is antecedent to axioms. Axioms are the starting points of cognition, on which all proofs depend.
No one can think or perceive for another man. If reality, without your help, does not convince a person of the self-evident, he has abdicated reason and cannot be dealt with any further.
Philosophy, in Ayn Rand's view, is the fundamental force shaping every man and culture. It is the science that guides men's conceptual faculty, and thus every field of endeavor that counts on this faculty.
Conceptual knowledge is not acquired in a state of total ignorance or from a vantage point of omniscience. At any stage of development, from child to sage and from savage to scientist, man can make conceptual differentiations and integrations only on the basis of prior knowledge, the specific limited knowledge available to him at that stage. Man's mind functions on the basis of a certain context. The context, states Miss Rand, "is the entire field of a mind's awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development.
Although definitions are contextual, they are not arbitrary. The correct definition at any stage is determined by the facts of reality. Given any specific set of entities to be differentiated, it is the actual nature of the entities that determines the distinguishing characteristics.
...knowledge is knowledge of reality, and existence has primacy over consciousness. If the mind wishes to know existence, therefore, it must conform to existence. If thought created reality, no science offering guidance to thought would be applicable; consciousness could assert whatever it wished, and reality would obey.
To act in accordance with one's values is a complex responsibility. It requires that one know what he is doing and why.
Concepts do not pertain to consciousness alone or to existence alone; they are products of a specific kind of relationship between the two.
Every type of question reduces to: "What is it?" For example, "Why did a certain event occur?" means: "What is the nature of the cause?" "How?" means "What is the process?" "Where" means "What is the place?"
If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.
Reason, according to Objectivism, is not merely a distinguishing attribute of man; it is his fundamental attribute - his basic means of survival.
A man cannot do much with his faculty of vision until his eyes are in focus. Otherwise, his eyesight gives him only a blur or haze…A similar concept applies to the mind. In regard to thought, as to vision, the same alternative exists: clear awareness or a state of blur, haze, fog in which relatively little can be discriminated.
There can be no advice where man has no power to choose his course of behavior.
No matter what his emotions, a sane man retains the power to face facts. If an emotion is overwhelming, he retains the power to recognize this and to defer cognition until he can establish a calmer mood.
The arbitrary, however, has no relation to evidence or context; neither term, therefore - "true" or "false" - can be applied to it. Philosophically, the arbitrary is worse than the false. The false has a relation, albeit negative, to the facts of reality...As to the practical consequences of this difference, whom would you prefer to work for, talk to, or buy groceries from: a man who miscounts the people in his living room (an error), or who declares that the room is filled with demons (the arbitrary)?
To satisfy this need, one must recognize that philosophy is a system of ideas. By its nature as an integrating science, it cannot be a grab bag of ideas. All philosophic questions are interrelated.
If one tries the random approach, then questions (which one has no means of answering) simply proliferate in all directions.
If an individual accepts a philosophy of reason, and if he characteristically chooses to be in focus, he will gradually gain knowledge, confidence, and a sense of intellectual control.
Existence is Identity; Consciousness is Identification.
“Aristotle is the champion of this world, the champion of nature, as against the supernaturalism of Plato. Denying Plato’s World of Forms, Aristotle maintains that there is only one reality: the world of particulars in which we live, the world men perceive by means of their physical senses. Universals, he holds, are merely aspects of existing entities, isolated in thought by a process of selective attention… the physical world, in his view, is not a shadowy projection controlled by a divine dimension, but…is an orderly, intelligible, natural realm open to the mind of man.”
Ayn Rand explains some of the steps necessary to achieve a conscious, rational philosophy. She teaches the reader how to identify, and then evaluate, the hidden premises at work in his own soul or nation. She makes clear the mechanism by which philosophy rules men and societies…
One knows that the axioms are true not by inference of any kind, but by sense perception. When one perceives a tomato, for example, there is no evidence that it exists, beyond the fact that one perceives it; there is no evidence that it is something, beyond the fact that one perceives it; and there is no evidence that one is aware, beyond the fact that one is perceiving it. Axioms are perceptual self-evidences. There is nothing to be said in their behalf except: look at reality. What is true of tomatoes applies equally to oranges, buildings, people, music, and stars.
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only the evil that can profit. The reason for this is not that evil is more powerful than good. On the contrary, the reason is that evil is powerless and, therefore, can exist only as a parasite on the good.
It is not true that words are necessary primarily for the sake of communication. Words are essential to the process of conceptualization and thus to all thought. They are as necessary in the privacy of a man's mind as in any public forum; they are as necessary on a desert island as in society. The word constitutes the completion of the integration stage; it is the form in which the concept exists.
When a definition is contextually revised, the new definition does not contradict the old one. The facts identified in the old definition remain facts; the knowledge earlier gained remains knowledge. What changes is that, as one's field of knowledge expands, these facts no longer serve to differentiate the units. The new definition does not invalidate the content of the old; it merely refines a distinction in accordance with the demands of a growing cognitive context.
Definitions are determined by the facts of reality - within the context of one's knowledge. Both aspects of this statement are crucial: reality and the context of knowledge; existence and consciousness.
A context dropper believes that he can understand and alter one element within a network of interrelated factors, while leaving everything else unseen and unaffected. In fact, however, a change in one element rebounds throughout the network.
As one more illustration, consider the issue of literary style. Some styles are praised as economical; the writer communicates a complex content by means of relatively few words. Other writers are prolix weighing our consciousness down with more units than the content requires. At the evil extreme of this continuum is the writer who deliberately flouts the crow-epistemology; he seeks to subvert the reader's consciousness by loading it methodically with more units than it can hold. For example, he gives you a seemingly endless sentence, with a jingle of qualifications, subordinate clauses, and parenthetical remarks, erupting in the middle, all of which you must plow through and try to retain while you are still holding the subject of the main clause and waiting for the verb. After a few pages of such prose, the reader's mind simply closes, and the words turn into meaningless verbiage.
Concept formation and use is precisely the realm that is not automatic or infallible, but volitional. In order to conceptualize, a man must expend effort; he must engage in the kind of mental work that no stimulus can necessitate. He must struggle to relate, connect, process an ever-growing range of data - and he must learn to do it correctly.
To an evader, a feeling of some kind is more important than truth. A man finds a certain fact or policy to be unpleasant, frightening, or guilt-provoking. Reality to the contrary notwithstanding, he does not want the fact to be real or the policy to be necessary; so he decides to blank out the offending datum. Or a certain idea or policy gives a man pleasure, reassurance, or relief, and he wants to believe in or practice it, even though he knows reality is against him in the issue; in Ayn Rand's words, place an "I wish" above an "It is".
Unlike the basic choice to be in or out of focus, the choice to evade a specific content is motivated, the motive being the particular feeling that the evader elevates above reality.
The true is identified by reference to a body of evidence; it is pronounced "true" because it can be integrated without contradiction into a total context. The false is identified by the same means; it is pronounced "false" because it contradicts the evidence and/or some aspect of the wider context.
The final step in concept formation is definition. This step is essential to every concept except axiomatic concepts and concepts denoting sensations.
Evasion, by contrast, is an active process aimed at a specific content. The evader does expend effort; he purposely directs his attention away from a given fact. He works not to see it; if he cannot banish it fully, he works not to let it become completely real to him.
The drifter does not integrate his mental contents; the evader disintegrates them, by struggling to disconnect a given item from everything that would give clarity or significance in his own mind. In the one case, the individual is immersed in a fog by default; he chooses not to raise his level of awareness. In the other case, he expends energy to create a fog; he lowers his level of awareness.
The process of evasion, as we will see, is profoundly destructive. Epistemologically, it invalidates a mental process. Morally, it is the essence of evil. According to Objectivism, evasion is the vice that underlies all other vices. In the present era, it is leading to the collapse of the world.
To the extent that a man is in focus, however, the world with all its possibilities opens up to him.
A proposition can have no greater validity - no more of a relation to reality - than do the concepts that make it up. The precondition of the quest for truth, therefore, is the formulation of proper definitions.
Now you may ask why make a metaphysical catastrophe out of the fact that we are going to die one day?...If you know Epicurus from the ancient world he took care of this whole problem of death very well with the following argument. He said Death should be nobody’s concern at all because no one will ever encounter it. Death is not a problem of the living because they are alive, and it is not a problem of the dead because they are not. Consequently no one will ever know any state other than life and there’s no point groveling before the fact of death.
…if you are to fight these errors, you have to know the main arguments advanced in favor of them. You have to hear the Devil’s case, so to speak, presented as strongly as his case permits…You have to be sure you know on each issue what really is true and what is wrong with the arguments advanced for the erroneous position.
Philosophy is not a bauble of the intellect, but a power from which no man can abstain…The reason is that man, by his nature as a conceptual being, cannot function at all without some form of philosophy to serve as his guide.
A God susceptible of proof would wither and starve the spirit of mysticism. Such an entity would be finite and limited; it would be one thing among others within the universe, a thing bound by identity and causality, capable of being integrated without contradiction into man’s cognitive context, incompatible with miracles, revelations, and the other paraphernalia of unreason. Such an entity would not be an ineffable mystery transcending nature and science. It would be a part of nature to be studied by science, and it would be of no use whatever to a mystic.
So long as men remain ignorant of their basic mental process, they have no answer to the charge leveled by mysticism and skepticism alike, that their mental content is some form of revelation or invention detached from reality.
