We can now formally introduce Objectivist epistemology. This subject can be summed up by one word, `reason'. Reason, again, is logic applied to reality. Recall from previous essays all that this simple definition implies.
Man is capable of reason, that is, he possesses a rational faculty. This faculty is engaged in the processing, integrating, and acquisition of knowledge. This faculty is reality-based. Its input from reality is man's sensory mechanisms. Its conceptual output is in turn answerable to reality.
Man, along with the higher animals, is capable of a process known as `perception'. This phenomenon occurs when sensory input is integrated into a `percept'.
When a dog sees a bone, an integration of the visual data gathered by its eyes is performed by its perceptual faculty. In other words, the border between the bone and the rest of the dog's sensory field is sharpened and the bone is identified as an object. This perceptualization of raw sensation is further enhanced by integration with present and previous inputs from the other senses. The dog sees/smells/feels a bone, it is aware of an aspect of reality -- a thing.
Man alone, however, has a conceptual faculty. A dog is limited to those things within the direct scope of its senses. A man can chart the operation of a computer system on the back of a napkin.
Concepts do not arise out of nowhere -- concepts derive from reality. In a sense, a concept is an integration of specific aspects of percepts. It is a form of generalization. It is a mental symbol for an integrated whole.
A first-level concept is abstracted from percepts. If I show you a big house, a big dog, and a big tree (providing you have seen small houses, small dogs, and small trees) you can abstract the common attribute of each entity, bigness. You can then isolate bigness from the extent to which it is present in each of the big objects (perceptual wholes) you had seen. Now you have a concept. This concept is grounded in a fact of reality (and hence objective) -- objects can differ in size yet be similar in other ways.
Objectivists will often ask what fact of reality gives rise to a certain concept. For the concept `bigness', this fact is that objects can differ in size while being similar in other ways. The object is the fact of reality. The concept is the abstraction. This is called concept formation by measurement omission. That is, you make a concept out of a bunch of big things by `forgetting' how big they are and only retaining what it means for something to be big.
Second-level concepts are abstracted from first-level concepts and possibly percepts. So long as higher level concepts are traceable to lower level concepts and ultimately to percepts, they are objective and retain meaning. This holds true even in the most advanced realms of mathematical and scientific conceptualization.
Contrary to my example, `bigness' would likely not be a first-level concept. You would probably need concepts for dog, house, and tree to reach `bigness' in the manner described above. If I showed you two trees and a dog and you realized that the two trees had common properties that the dog did not, that would be a first-level concept of `tree'. You could refine the concept later.
To arrive at a concept as sophisticated as `friend', many simpler concepts must be grasped. For example, without concepts such as `self', `others', `affection', `respect', `relationship', and so on, the concept `friend' is not possible.
Yet, man's mind is only capable of holding a small number of concepts `actively' at a time. How then can we grasp a concept as sophisticated as `friend' which relies on so many concepts each of which rely on lower-level concepts? The answer is one of man's most powerful conceptual tools: language. We use discrete symbols to encompass and stand for wide conceptual nets. If we ignore the net, we lose the meaning.
A concept has a label or name -- this allows easy retrieval. I could not think about as complex a concept as `justice' without some label for it. I could not even conceive of the concept `justice' without labels for all of the preceding concepts that lead up to it and make it understandable.
This process of concept-naming, or language, greatly extends the power of man's conceptual faculty and allows the process of deriving concepts from prior concepts to proceed without limit, the lowest-level concepts can be temporarily ignored while processing the higher-level concepts. Language is only secondarily a social tool. Its primary function is to enhance the power of the individual mind.
Meaning, however, is a concept that you cannot define in terms of simpler concepts. Meaning, as we have seen, is prior to any logical manipulations. Meaning is prior to (or the first law of) reason. It is the basis for all concepts and the foundation for valid reasoning.
Man forms percepts automatically. Try not to integrate what you perceive; you cannot avoid it. Try to see the room you are in as patches of color and not objects; you cannot do so. But man forms concepts and manipulates them only by choice. Deep thinking requires concentrated effort. For Objectivism, the foundation of volition -- free will -- is to be found here, in the choice to think or not to think, the choice to reason or to evade, to focus or to blur.
All of you have (I hope) automated some level of conceptual thought. You will find that when you have a few large words in front of you, reading them is automatic. You are in the habit of thinking, the habit of processing knowledge. The more you do it, the easier and more automatic it becomes and the freer you become to proceed volitionally to still higher-level concepts.
Epistemology is the field of philosophy that deals with the methods and standards for acquiring and validating concepts. It allows us to classify a claim as impossible (or meaningless), possible, likely (probable), or certain (true or proven).
The first category includes claims that conflict with already known information as well as assertions for which no proof is conceivable in principle. The middle two are reserved for claims part-way towards being proven. If it cannot be conceivable for a claim to be proven, one could not know what might constitute part of a complete proof. Any claim in principle unprovable, then, can never be regarded as possible, likely, probable, or true.
All of you have heard the old saw, ``anything is possible?''
Possible, by my dictionary, is defined as ``that can be; capable of existing.'' You judge something capable of existing if its existence is consistent with the nature of the universe as you understand it.
A common misconception is that all things are possible, by default. This is not true; for you to accept that something is possible, it must be so proven. If the existence of some concept contradicts a fact of reality that you know, that concept (as a symbol for reality) is impossible -- cannot be -- is not capable of existing.
This provides us with one method of demolishing the position of the agnostic. Consider what happens if we attempt to define God as an omnipotent entity. This is, of course, not a definition, but it could not even be part of one -- to define means to limit or to identify the borders of.
No fact of reality suggests or supports the existence of power without limit, nor could any; any finite demonstration could suggest only finite power. The concept of power, to have identity, must have limits. Thus the existence of an omnipotent being is impossible. In fact, to define god as an omnipotent being is to commit a stolen concept fallacy, to be a `being' is to have a precise identity, to have precise limits. There is no foundation in reality for the possibility of any other kind of being.
The agnostic, in the name of fair-mindedness and even-handedness commits an act of intellectual renunciation. He lends equal weight to the rational and the irrational, the conceivable and the inconceivable.
A god so `defined' is literally inconceivable -- could not be. The `concept' lacks meaning. It has no conceptual net and hence no epistemologic validity.
Of course, one could also attack the Agnostic's position by pointing out that the potential existence of an ominpotent `entity' able to change the rules at whim is equivalent to the claim that man can be certain of nothing. Once again, proving a claim equivalent to ``man can be certain of nothing'' is equivalent to proving it wrong.
Science is that branch of knowledge which insists on referring all concepts back to reality for searching, detailed, quantitative verification and prediction -- and potential falsification.
Occam's Razor is a principle of science. It says that when you have certain sensory evidence and you have multiple theories that explain it, you should prefer the simplest one. Thou shalt not multiply concepts beyond necessity.
From any claim and set of evidence to support it, a more complex claim can be formed that is also consistent with the evidence. For example, suppose one is given an enormous body of experimental data to show that the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between any two objects. If the largest distance tested in the experiment is 20 light years, one can postulate that the force of gravity acts as proposed up to 30 light years, and then gets stronger as the distance is increased.
Raymond Smullyan and Martin Gardner have discussed the term ``grue,'' meaning green until the year 2001 AD and then blue. Which claim has greater evidence to support it: ``All emeralds are green'' or ``All emeralds are grue?'' Occam's razor is an absolutely necessary part of epistemology.
A positive claim is a specific existence claim or claim about the nature of reality. Positive claims require evidence. If someone asserts a positive claim and someone else asserts the corresponding negative claim, absent evidence, one must side with the negative claim.
As Branden puts it: If someone were to argue that the side of the moon that we cannot see is made of flower gardens and Coca-Cola factories, you would ask him to present evidence. If his evidence consisted solely of the argument that you could not disprove his claim, You would be justified in never speaking to him again. (Obviously, Branden said this some time ago, we now have ammunition to counter this claim specifically)
If an observer were to watch this exchange and conclude that he had made a claim that he could not prove, but you could not disprove it either so the matter is not settled, the observer would be committing a gross epistemological error. He would be giving equal weight to a positive claim and a negative claim.
By the way, the corresponding negative claim would be, ``I do not know what the far side of the moon is made out of.'' That is the claim we must side with absent evidence.
The American legal tradition contains a concept of `innocent until proven guilty'. This has a valid epistemologic base. If I claim your guilt, I make a positive claim, and it is incumbent upon me to prove it. If you assert your innocence, you are not making a positive claim. You need not prove that negative.
As Branden explained: Imagine if you are put on trial for murder. You cannot provide an alibi, no one will tell you when the murder was committed. You cannot prove you were never anywhere near the site of the murder, you do not know where the murder was committed. You cannot prove that you did not know the alleged victim, no one will tell you who the victim is. You cannot show that you had no motive, no one will tell you what motive the known facts of the crime suggest. The only `proof' consists of the fact that you cannot disprove that you are a murderer.
Perhaps the only thing worse than the actions of the prosecutor in this case would be the actions of a jury member who regarded both sides as on equal footing. Both sides do have equal evidence, none. Again, such a juror commits an epistemological error by giving equal weight to an arbitrary positive claim and its corresponding negative claim. Here we see baldly the evil of the agnostic position.
This brings up an important point regarding human cognition. Human languages use a form of shorthand. The claim ``2+2=4'' is shorthand for a set of claims that run roughly as follows: The statement ``2+2=4'' is meaningful and states a claim that is subject to verification and I am presently satisfied that such verification has been performed. Such shorthand is convenient both linguistically and conceptually, but we must not forget that all of our claims must be based in reality and man's means of cognition.
Thus, to deny someone's claim that ``2+2=4'' you need not actually disprove that 2+2=4! You can also choose to disprove the implied claims of meaningfulness and verification. By so doing, you render it impossible for someone to validly assert that ``2+2=4.''
If you know any agnostics, present the above arguments to them. Chances are they have never reasoned through the true nature of their `impartiality'.
Lastly, we have the law of causality. This principle states that the actions, interactions, or transformations possible to an entity are determined by that entity's specific identity. A piano can be played but a thought cannot. A boy can grow up to be a man but a rock cannot.
The same standard of evidence discussed earlier for existence claims or attribute claims also applies to causal claims. An action cannot be posited as possible to an entity without some basis in reality. A claim that some entity is not known to be capable of a specific action or transformation is a negative claim. It has priority over positive causal claims. One need not disprove that a certain astronomic configuration adversely affects the consequences of our actions.
The law of causality also states that actions are only possible to entities. The concept of an act pre-supposes that which acts. There are no causes, effects, changes, or consequences without entities to cause, affect and be affected, change, or suffer consequences.
To ask for the cause of an existent is to ask for that configuration of other entities that must be present before the entity in question can be said to exist, or certain related attributes actualized.
This is a deep question in reality. With each scientific revolution, our conception of identity and causality is sharpened. What are we to make, for example, of such quantum mechanical concepts as `time-reversed causality'?
Right now, those words should just be nonsense syllables to us. If we infuse specific meaning into these words, they become available to reason, but a consistent complex integration of many related concepts is needed as well as an ongoing appeal back to reality. This is the agenda of science.
My frequent reference to quantum mechanics is not accidental. Quantum Electrodynamics and Chromodynamics just happen to be the most precise quantitatively verifiable laws in all of science. In every applicable branch of science (and this means every area to which it has been applied -- solid-state physics, chemical bonding, nuclear interactions, laser physics, super-conductivity, astrophysics, and too many others to name) every presently testable prediction has been verified to multiple decimal places, limited only by the accuracy of the available measuring equipment.
It is one of the grandest triumphs of the mind of man. It is a model and showpiece for the efficacy of human thought. If it seems to lead to contradictory consequences then, as Ayn Rand would say, ``check your premises.'' There are no contradictions in reality; there may be in trying to extend previously workable concepts beyond their original conceptual net -- form new ones if necessary.
At this point in our discussion, I simply want to point out that the relationship between reality and causality is unidirectional. Causality is embedded in reality -- in what exists -- and not the converse. Quantum mechanical observations of `reverse causality' do not violate some a priori concept of causality, for Objectivists nothing is a priori -- we infer everything from perception of reality.
Quantum Mechanical constructs may, however, be telling us something deep about the nature of reality -- the identity of existence. That is for the future of science. No contradiction, however, exists in reality; what exists exists.
Those interested in more detail about Objectivist epistemology will enjoy Rand's work, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand has an excellent step-by-step discussion of concept formation and is a superb introduction to Objectivism in general.
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