Copyright: 1967

Publisher: Meridian

ISBN: 0452010306

The Tea Party craze lately has been bringing Libertarian politics to the forefront and at the same time Objectivist philosophy has been bubbling up here and there across our national conscious.  I have a number of acquaintances and colleagues who consider themselves followers of objectivist thinking and they have encouraged me (it didn't take much) to learn more about the topic.  Accordingly I borrowed a copy of Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and happened to get a copy of the expanded second edition with Leonard Peikoff's essay The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy. While I am not a big fan of philosophy, it always intrigues me when I dive into the field and this was no exception.

Formation of knowledge

Recently my 7th grade daughter remarked to me "You can't really tell someone what 'red' is without either using the word 'red' or pointing to something that is red!"  Her question came on the heels of my reading of Rand's book and it made me think of some of the questions that Ayn Rand tries to answer.  How did we all decide that "red is red"?  Why did we decide that a table is a table... but a desk is something different although very much the same?  How do we know if something is true or false?

These are fascinating topics to me.  In my work with human-computer interaction, information theory is full of similar problems with regard to perspective in communication. 

Ayn Rand starts at the very beginning: "Existence Exists" is her foundational premise and from there she systematically builds a theory of knowledge that is based on the fact that you can objectively identify and quantify everything.  If you have never read any philosophy (and who could blame you!?) this might seem to be quite obvious.  If you have read philosophy (and realized just how odd these philosophy guys usually are) the question of "how can we know what we know?" is a legitimate question.  Rand soundly rejects Kant and a whole slew of other philosophers in her own inimitable style.

Notes

Rather than pretend that I am an Objectivist or even pretend that I fully understand Objectivism, I am going to simply write out some notes I wrote down and my thoughts about them.  If you are an Objectivist, don't be offended if I get something wrong. If you are looking to learn something about Objectivism, then by all means you are in the wrong place!

  • Formations of wider concepts requires more knowledge than just the base concept.  You must also understand the concepts that the wider concept will be subsuming.  You can't just understand one or a few of these smaller concepts but rather all of them. 
    • Interestingly a number of Objectivists that I know cling tightly to Capitalism and Free Markets but they have little to no understanding of any other systems of economics.  (I am still a Monetarist though I have read and understand Keynes)
  • "The truth or falsehood of all of man's conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests on the truth or falsehood of his definitions."
    • "A definition is a statement that identifies the nature of the units subsumed under a concept."
  • Counting is a way to reduce the number of concepts we must keep in mind.
    • Rand would have definitely benefited from some of the recent discoveries and research in the field of cognition.  How we chunk information down in order to maintain our various levels of memory would have been definitely interesting in light of her theories.
  • The two primary questions Rand seems to be answering are: "What do I know?" and "How do I know it?"

Ayn Rand seems to envision herself in a grand battle to save "reason".  I often wondered as I read if this was from her background growing up in socialism or if it was a result of her being a female in the "man's worlse" of philosophy?

She states at one point that "philosophers... serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge."  I have never held philosophers in such high regard!  Perhaps because I am not one? 

Peikoff's essay was particularly interesting although I found it far less convincing.  At one point he argues against the opposition's position and in a lengthy parenthetical explains that the terminology they use (their "mode of speech") is unjustified so he will use his own terminology to explain their position.  I found this hard to justify in light of Rand's assertion that "words convey meaning".  You can't just change what the other person says and argue against the new terminology.  That's a classic straw-man in my opinion and caused me to take everything Peikoff said afterwards with a large grain of salt.

I probably completely missed his point but at one point Peikoff asserts "In a serious epistemological sense of the word, a man cannot conceive the opposite of a proposition he knows to be true (as apart from propositions dealing with man-made facts)." "Only ignorance or evasion can enable a man to attempt to project such an alternative."  What does this do for counterfactual thinking or "what-if" creativity? 

Conclusion

This book is an excellent introduction into the thinking behind Objectivism.  Reading the book made me wonder though if most of the Objectivists that I have come in contact with have ever seriously considered any other philosophy?  I am not one to subscribe to a particular thread of philosophy... I don't think I am smart enough to play with Kant, Aristotle and the likes.  Many objectivists on the other hand seem to fancy themselves quite intelligent and smarter than the average person.  It seems that "thinking about things that other people don't think about" must make you smarter than them.  Perhaps... but then my grandfather is smarter than most everyone put together because he knows more ways to keep a groundhog out of a garden than anyone I have ever met!  Specialized knowledges does not equal intelligence in my opinion and this goes for philosophy as well as gardening.  My grandpa is really a smart guy... smart enough to tell you that he doesn't think he is very smart!