Metaphysics, as I discussed in the preceding essay, is the study of the nature of reality. It addresses the question, ``what exists?'' and answers it with ``everything.'' Again we encounter three basic axioms (or more loosely, laws).
Note that these are not Aristotle's three axioms of logic, discussed in the preceding essay. We are now talking about axioms of reality. Later we will return to Aristotle's three axioms as further axioms of reality.
The first axiom is called the axiom of reality or existence. Rand phrased it as ``existence exists.'' This means that unless one accepts the existence of reality, one cannot reason at all. An acknowledgement of this claim is implicit in any other claim. Even to make the counter claim, ``there is no reality'' is to make a specific claim about what the nature of reality actually is, thus admitting that it has one. It also acknowledges implicitly that perceptual and conceptual awareness are themselves existents.
The next axiom is the axiom of identity in its most fundamental form -- every existent entity (and this is the only kind that there is) is what it is -- meaning it is something specific. It has the properties it has and not others; in a word, it has an identity. It exists. Again, to deny this is to assert a specific property of specific existents.
The last axiom is the axiom of consciousness. This axiom states that men are conscious and have the ability to reason and think. The truth of this axiom is available directly by introspection. To deny this you must assert that you do not think it is true, but if it was not true, you could not think. Denial requires a denyer.
You may be tempted to dismiss these axioms as asserting the obvious, and of course, they do. That is exactly the point. You will soon see how unobvious they are to some when we consider such matters as infinity and causality.
Each of the six axioms mentioned so far (existence, metaphysical identity, consciousness, logical identity, non-contradiction, excluded-middle) are verifiable by direct perception. To be granted axiomatic status, a fact must be ostensively demonstrable. In other words, one can say ``by reality I mean this'' and sweep one's hand.
A ``percept'' is the smallest individual piece of perception just as a ``concept'' is the smallest piece of conception. We start out by forming concepts out of our percepts. We see a several chairs and several non-chairs and note the similarities and differences and wind up forming the concept ``chair''.
Every percept is a percept of something. Every percept identifies specific attributes of an object (in relation to the perceiver). Every percept requires a perceiver and every concept a conceiver.
For an Objectivist to accept some assertion as having truth value, it must either be perceivable directly or derivable from preceding perceptions. Should future percepts invalidate it, it must be rejected as an error. No other standard is needed or accepted.
In essence, concepts are tools men use to manipulate large numbers of percepts efficiently. You create the concept ``justice'' because without a single label for all the observations and knowledge that go into that concept it would be too difficult for you to think about concepts that are based on justice.
You also understand the concept ``justice'' on many levels. At its simplest level, justice is a sense of fairness about a transaction. At higher levels, justice refers to a complex system of accusations, defenses, procedures, standards, and so on.
Man is not omniscient and may make errors. This presents no metaphysical problem. Just because a man may make errors under certain circumstances, it does not follow that he may make errors under any circumstances. Both error and certainty are possible to man.
As an analogy, human beings are capable of bearing children and running a mile in four minutes. As Branden notes, this does not mean that an elderly, crippled gentlemen is capable of either.
Consciousness is always consciousness of something in reality. A consciousness may fail to volitionally identify correctly the subject of its consciousness, but it is still there in reality. Any other standard obstructs rather than assists the quest for accurate identification.
It does not matter who perceives an entity or how it is analyzed, it is. What exists exists independent of who perceives it. At a later point, I will devote some time to analyzing certain interpretations of Quantum Mechanics that may appear to conflict with this principle; they do not.
Regardless of what Quantum Mechanics may ultimately tell us about the nature of realty, it will never tell us that it has no specific nature or that its nature is whatever we want it to be. We will also have to be careful to distinguish quantum fact from quantum interpretation.
If anyone out there disputes these fundamental aspects of metaphysics, I would like to know how they propose to tell me. If they are to question my writings, they must admit that they are what they are and not what they perceive them to be. If this were the case, they should write to themselves.
Do not bother trying to engage in rational discourse with me if you refuse to admit that rational discourse is possible, that I exist, that you exist, that you know I exist, that you know you exist, and so on. If you are in doubt about these things, be true to your beliefs and remain silent.
There is nothing worse than arguing with someone who claims that you do not exist. Some mystical philosophers really do claim to believe this -- they call it 'transcending the self.' There is nothing worse than arguing rationally over whether rational discourse is possible. As Tom Lehrer phrased it, in a somewhat less serious context, ``if you are unable to communicate, the least you can do is to shut up.''
I will deal with one of these absurdities specifically, the question of whether one's senses provide one with valid information about reality. It is probably one of the most commonly argued such absurdities, often used as a battering ram to assault reason. If you are seriously interested in any others, don't let my semi-serious comments above dissuade you from writing; I don't bite, and I don't morally censure someone for genuinely trying to clarify his concepts for himself, however convoluted his path.
``How do you know that your senses provide you with valid information about reality? How do you know that your senses do not distort reality instead of perceiving it truly and accurately?''
Before reading on, consider what you have read above and think about how you would address this sophisticated sounding argument. Then read on.
We can address such a challenge using the Socratic method -- we ask more fundamental counter-questions.
How does the questioner know there is even such a thing as reality? How does he know that there is such a thing as valid information, by which standard he can call other information invalid? What do these questions mean? What does it mean to know something? Each of these points is more basic than the original question.
To even phrase the original question, the questioner must know that I have senses. Given his skeptical attitude, one genuinely wonders how he was able to reach this conclusion with any degree of certainty.
True, we could discuss each of these things. The point is that the original question could never be a fundamental point of disagreement between two logical people because it distorts the hierarchical structure of knowledge. Why then do they bring it up instead of these more fundamental issues? Simple, they are counting on you not to notice their deception. This is a common technique of illogic.
To what is one comparing the evidence of the senses when he judges it inaccurate? What standard of comparison is there other than reality?
If the questioner proceeded honestly, he would start by considering how you know you have senses and how he knows that you have senses. He would first have to establish that you do, in fact, have senses before he could dispute their ability to perceive reality. He would also have to establish that there is a reality for you not to perceive. If you force him to do so and proceed logically and sequentially in the development of his concepts, you will find that the original mish-mash could never even come up.
On another level of analysis, for him to even think of asking his question meaningfully, he must first understand what it means to know something. Yet his position implies the conclusion that no valid knowledge is possible. How could he know, or even suspect, this? What has he analyzed to conclude that senses are fallible?
The best he can do is to claim that he has perceived some contradiction directly, but to do this is to admit that his knowledge, which he claims accurate, originated from his senses. If he conceived a metaphysical contradiction independent of his senses, to what can he claim his conclusions apply?
Would he deny knowing that he has asked me the question? Or, after I answer it, is he free to deny that I did and that he heard my answer? If so, why should I bother to address it? If there is no accurate perception of reality from which we can begin, there can be no rational discourse.
If he means that my senses perceive some of reality directly, but not all of it, I would agree. I cannot see gamma radiation or radio waves. These are aspects of reality, however, and I can reach them and understand them indirectly by applying reason to the evidence of my senses and by using scientific instrumentation to extend the power of my senses.
Without this ability, and an agreement on its valid correlation with reality, the original criticism could not be leveled. The senses themselves are part of reality and have been developed through evolution to provide me directly with the information about reality that I need most.
Let me also deal with the arguments that the senses are `invalid' because I cannot see behind me or I cannot see all the sides of a tree at once ... a set of railroad tracks appear to converge at a point and they do not ... a pencil in a glass of water appears broken and it is not ... a mountain appears small when you are far away from it ... or whatever.
Such questions ignore the fact that man, his consciousness, and his senses are also part of reality. They have specific identities and specific limitations and bounds. They are arguing that only omniscience, that is, knowledge gained without method, process, effort, or context is valid knowledge. There is no polite way to explain how wrong such an argument is.
Branden answered such objections as follows: If I could see an electron directly and did not have to infer its existence, I could not see mountains directly and would have to infer their existence. If a mountain appeared the same size no matter how far from it I was, I could not tell how far away it was. And so on.
Man's senses operate in a context. They cannot deceive you but they can mislead you. An appeal to the rest of your senses and to your ability to reason, experiment, and learn will allow you to draw valid conclusions about the nature of reality.
Any act of perception involves several elements. There is the object perceived, the sensory mechanism, and possibly a transmission medium. Each of these are aspects of reality that can affect the total resulting perception. Fortunately, man can use his reason, and further perceptions, to isolate the effects of each of these components.
If he still wants to insist that there are aspects of reality not perceivable by the senses, no matter how they are extended by reason and science, I must ask him how HE knows this. If his ideas are not communicable, that is, capable of being understood by reason, he cannot hope to persuade me. If his ideas are not testable and communicable, it is only because they have no implications in reality, for if they did, they could be addressed.
No proposition purporting to say something about the real world carries any intellectual potency unless the world would be one way if it holds and another if it does not. This is the intellectual base for all science and the source of its potency. All scientific constructs leave themselves open to falsification by reality -- they are potent because they can be wrong! This is precisely why scientific theories have `predictive validity'.
To claim that something is not only unknown but unknowable is absurd. To claim this, the speaker must know enough about the nature of the alleged unknowable to know that it exists and that it is permanently beyond the scope of man's advancing knowledge. This is an enormous amount of knowledge, and I sure would like to know how he obtained it about a supposed unknowable. It does not mean anything to claim that something is true but not provable (in principle).
As Peikoff explained, concluding that something is ``true'' is the endpoint of the proof process -- no conceivable process means no conceivable endpoint. In reason, something is only considered ``true'' if it is certain, that is, proven. If we cannot conceive of the possibility of a proof we cannot conceive of ourselves regarding it as true. Thus an unprovable (in principle) premise is literally `inconceivable'.
Each of the three laws of logic (identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle) actually applies to reality. Reality is what it is. Reality contains no contradictions. Reality either is or is not. Each of the laws of logic is a fact of reality and, only derivatively, a law of reason. As laws of reason, meaning must come first. This was the whole point of the digits-of-pi excluded-middle analysis in the preceding essay.
We can now unite logic into our conceptual base. Now that we know what the universe is like, we can analyze what is knowledge and how it is obtained formally. This brings us to epistemology, the study of what valid knowledge is and how it can be obtained and verified.
The method of integrating knowledge about reality is logic, the art of non-contradictory, meaningful identification. The combination of logic and metaphysics tells us that no aspect of reality can be permanently beyond man's comprehension or perception. This brings us to the definition of ``reason'': the application of logic to the facts of reality by a conscious entity.
We require that reason be performed by a conscious entity for two reasons. First, as explained, meaning is prior to reason. Consciousness and meaning are fundamentally linked.
Second, without the freedom to test and verify one's assertions, certainty is impossible. A computer can never be `certain' of anything since it is not free to test its premises. If it is programmed with self-correcting mechanisms based in reality, it will self-correct. If it is programmed with self-deluding mechanisms, it will self-delude. It cannot differentiate these two because it has no fundamental capability to correct errors in its primary programming. Again, only conscious entities possess free will; these two are fundamentally linked.
To say that a computer is incapable of error is to confuse operational error with factual error. I can program my computer to print out ``2+2=5'' over and over. It does not make an error, in the sense that it does exactly what I told it to do. Still, its `conclusions' are clearly factually erroneous. Admittedly, the flaw lies in its programming (placed in it by a conscious entity capable of factual error) and not in the operation of the computer itself -- this is precisely the point.
As a further rejoinder to those who tell me that Objectivism has nothing to contribute to science and math, observe how much Objectivism could contribute to the field of Artificial Intelligence, if those in the field would only listen. For example, the preceding concepts provide the foundation for strong responses to many of the arguments of the proponents of `strong AI' as well as to many of AI's critics.
Here are some exercises to see how well you can manipulate the concepts explained without being manipulated yourself. Feel free to send your efforts to me. I will be more than happy to evaluate them. Each of the invalid arguments below can be refuted based on a clear application of the three laws of logic and an understanding of the nature of reality.
By the way, it is cheating to respond to this by claiming that you are the greatest entity of which you are capable of conceiving. My sister came up with this response and, while I like it, it avoids finding the actual logical fallacy involved, although it does point to it.
Same warning as above. My sister wants to know why perfection includes being male.
The reasoning here is valid ... I have retained the same definition of the word ``bad'' throughout the argument.
- A bad boy is one who is heedless of others.
- John is heedless of others.
- Therefore, John is a bad boy
In this instance, of course, I have been inconsistent, because I have not retained a consistent meaning of the key term ``bad'' throughout the argument ... I have violated the law of identity.
- A bad boy is one who is heedless of others.
- John is heedless of others.
- But John is NOT a bad boy because I like him.
This one is tough. I would be quite impressed if anyone reasoned it out fully just from the material I presented. Start by asking yourself what faith is and what reason is. That will put you on track.
``The very concept `exist' is man-made and might well be meaningless to some being from another planet. All our concepts and realities depend on our perceptual-cognitive apparatus and therefore and not independently or absolutely provable. The ideas that `existence exists', `existence is identity', and `A is A' are all man-made notions that could actually disappear from the universe if no man or man-like creatures were around to think them and `prove' them.''
(Believe it or not, Dr. Ellis presents this as a serious philosophical argument! If we had the space or the stomach, I could present dozens more from this same source.)
``In the version of logic that currently rules as `standard' among Western philosophers, one can prove many results that are widely regarded as counterintuitive, such as the theorem that from contradictory premises one can draw any conclusion at all, even one to which the original premises are irrelevant ... Reason does not establish that a conclusion is true, but at most that it involves no errors beyond those that one is already committed to.''(James McCawley is discussing favorably Paul Feyerabend's book Farewell to Reason, this book and this article thoroughly demolish a straw man; what they are discussing is not reason. (That is a big hint, by the way.))
``In a race between the fleet Achilles and the slow Tortoise, we give the Tortoise a small head start. Now, when we begin the race, Achilles must reach the Tortoise's starting position prior to overtaking him. At this point, the Tortoise will have moved ahead a small distance and the original situation has returned. Thus Achilles can never catch up to or pass the Tortoise.''
This ancient Greek conundrum has been addressed by philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians through the ages but rarely in its essentials. It has a very satisfying resolution via pure reality considerations. Believe it or not, Quantum Mechanical principles are relevant! You will first have to appreciate why the usual finite-sum-of-an-infinite-series type of mathematical analyses miss the mark.
``On three occasions I had conversations with him [Leonard Peikoff], when he was a guest on the David Brudnoy talk show (WBZ in Boston MA). Leonard usually shows up as a guest with David around April, when he (Leonard) makes his Ford Hall Forum appearance at Northeastern University in Boston, MA.On those occasions I discussed, of all things, Quantum Electrodynamics. Leonard rejects Quantum Electrodynamics on the grounds that the law of the excluded middle is violated. This is certainly the case when the logic of the split aperture experiment is analyzed. Sure enough, particles such as photons and electrons which are very localized on detection, show global behavior on transmission. The famous split aperture experiments imply that the particles go through two holes to produce the interference effects, and are therefore in two places at once. Leonard objects to this, and says it's absurd and self-contradictory.
Be that as it may, as I have pointed out to L.P., Quantum Electrodynamics, as a physical theory, has been world class for over 70 years. In addition to predicting accurately and accounting for all phenomena dealt with by Maxwell's theory of electromagnetics fields, QED also correctly deals with the quantum states of atoms, and gives an account of why our tushies don't go through the chairs we sit on. Classical Electrodynamics, clearly based on entities which conform to Aristotle's logical dicta, predicts that atoms will soon collapse since the electrons moving about the nucleus will radiate away their mass, and collapse into the nucleus. This is simply not the case.
So here we have an interesting (apparent) contradiction. In this corner wearing a toga, is Aristotle's tertium non datur, and in that corner (with some probability as given by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) is QED which predicts electromagnetic phenomena bang on to 15 decimal places. Being the sort of thinker I am, I go with facts supported by experiment, and conclude that Aristotle's logical postulates are not metaphysically or ontologically valid, but have limited usefulness in various domains of discourse.''
(Robert's errors flow immediately from Peikoff's. Both Kolker and Peikoff, in different ways, artificially restrict the possible scope of reality. If, for example, the concept of `location' is not perfectly valid, as presently understood, on a microscopic scale, so what? A new concept will replace it on the micro scale. It will still be an excellent approximation on the macro scale. Nothing in Metaphysics or Epistemology will change, and therefore, nothing in philosophy will change. Philosophy, and hence Peikoff speaking in its name, should have remained silent. Kolker, taking Peikoff's lead, adheres to the concept of the excluded middle in a case where the terms being used are not actually meaningful. I leave the details for you to work out.
Mr. Kolker and I have exchanged several letters. He has a talent for raising disturbing questions that demand deep insight.)
Do not expect to get all of these immediately. Some are relatively obvious, others quite difficult. In fact, some respected intellectuals still fall on a few of these. See how potent the laws of logic and a commitment to reality really are; use these for yourself. Money back if not satisfied.
I look forward to your analyses and any similar problems you would like to present. Much of the direction this forum takes is up to you. I will not know what is unclear to you and what needs deeper treatment unless you tell me. If you do not understand something, chances are you are not alone. If all of you keep quiet, none benefit. Most welcome are any reasoned challenges to the concepts being developed. That is how one hones one's thinking and solidifies one's knowledge.
The next discussion will deal with some of the details of formal epistemology, the meaning of concepts such as ``meaning'' and ``concept'' and the law of causality. We will also discuss the specific method of operation of man's conceptual faculty. A familiarity with these ideas is important to allow you to defend man's cognitive ability from philosophical attacks.
Entire contents Copyright (C) 1993-94 by Joel Katz, All rights reserved, except as below:
Permission is given to distribute this material electronically provided that it is unedited and presented in its entirety, including the copyright notice. Distribution in print or distribution of excerpts (I realize it isn't always the beginning of a new year) requires permission, address requests to djls@gate.net, no fee will be requested. I wish to be assured that I am not misrepresented and am made aware of where my work is being distributed. Quotation of brief excerpts is permitted so long as they are attributed.