Objectivist metaphysics

All of Objectivism rests on Objectivist metaphysics and Objectivist epistemology: the study of the fundamental nature of reality, and of the nature and proper method of acquiring knowledge. The key tenets of the Objectivist metaphysics are (1) the Primacy of Existence, (2) the Law of Identity ("A is A"), and (3) the Axiom of Consciousness. In addition, (4) the Law of Causality is a corollary of the Law of Identity. The Primacy of Existence states that reality (the universe, that which is) exists independently of human consciousness. The Law of Identity states that anything that exists is qualitatively determinate, that is, has a fixed, finite nature. The Axiom of Consciousness is the proposition that consciousness is awareness of that which exists. The Law of Causality states that things act in accordance with their natures. These propositions are all held in Objectivism to be axiomatic. According to Objectivism, the proof of a proposition's being axiomatic is that it cannot coherently be denied, because any such denial presupposes the axiom's truth (e.g., to say "The law of identity is false," is to presuppose that the law of identity is the law of identity, not something else, that to be false is to be false, not true.)
Meta-Metaphysics: The nature of philosophical axioms
Ayn Rand's metaphysics is based on three axioms: Existence, Identity, and Consciousness. Rand defined an axiom as "a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others whether any particular speaker chooses to explicitly identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it." As Leonard Peikoff noted, Rand's argumentation "is not a proof that the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity are true. It is proof that they are axioms, that they are at the base of knowledge and thus inescapable."
The axioms are grasped (implicitly) in sense perception. Whatever thing one perceives, it exists, one perceives it, and one is aware of something about its identity. (To ask, "Are the axioms true?" already presupposes, in the very concept of "truth," that there is a world, that one is aware, and that ideas can correspond to or contradict the nature of the facts.)
Axioms, as Peikoff puts it are perceptual self-evidencies. . The axioms can be validated by direct perception. One determines that existence exists merely by seeing, smelling, touching, tasting, or hearing something that exists.
Axioms, Rand notes, have traditionally been thought of as propositions, but any proposition presupposes the grasp of its constituent concepts, and axiomatic propositions presuppose axiomatic concepts. The axiomatic concept "existence" is grasped implicitly in an infant's earliest act of awareness. But formulating the explicit concept "existence" (or, more simply, "is") of course awaits conceptual development. Formulating explicit propositions, such as "Existence exists" or "A is A" requires a much more sophisticated knowledge and comes much later, both in the history of man and in a given individual's development. Making the axioms explicit is extremely important, Rand held, because they ground all cognitive norms, and should be the constant context for any of one's cognitive activities. According to Peikoff, if individuals " explicit identification of this knowledge , they have no way to adhere to the axioms, consistently and typically fall into some form of contradicting the self-evident, as in the various magical world views, which (implicitly) deny the law of identity" or philosophers "who reject the self-evident as the base of knowledge, and who then repudiate all three of the basic axioms..." Metaphysical realism is also accepted by Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and G. E. Moore (and many 20th Century scientific realists), though it is denied by idealists such as Berkeley, Leibniz, and Hegel. Objectivism rejects the view that one could, in principle, be conscious exclusively and entirely of one's own consciousness. Objectivism holds that consciousness is not possible without the prior existence of something, external to consciousness, for consciousness to be conscious of: "To be aware is to be aware of something."
==The Axiom of Identity: "To be is to be something, a thing is what it is," "A is A."==
Objectivism regards "identity" as the corollary of "existence:: "Existence is Identity." A thing is what it is. (This includes the denial of a Lockean "substratum"--an entity, she holds, is the sum total of its attributes. The Law of Identity, for Objectivism, is asserting more than the tautology of self-identity (i.e., "everything is identical to itself"): it is asserting that everything that exists has a specific identity, or nature, which consists of its attributes. To be is to be something in particular. Objectivism holds that all attributes (properties and characteristics) that constitute an existent's identity exist in a specific measure or degree; in this respect "identity" also means "specificity." Therefore, according to Objectivism, everything that exists has a specific, finite nature. An existent with a specific, finite nature cannot both have and not have the same attribute. Everything in reality is non-contradictory; though contradictions (i.e., inconsistencies) may be held in the mind.
Contemporary philosophers often claim that the law of identity is only as a rule of linguistic meaning--i.e., the "convention" that a word cannot change meaning within a specified context. This is starkly different from Rand's own interpretation, which is ontological rather than merely semantic. In For the New Intellectual she wrote:
Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
==The Axiom of Consciousness: "Consciousness is conscious"==
This axiom is the recognition that consciousness is the faculty of being aware of existence. The faculty of consciousness is analyzable, but the state of consciousness--what it is to be aware--is not; it is, she holds, an irreducible primary. While we can study the attributes of the faculty of consciousness, we cannot further analyze what it "means to be conscious" as such. Consciousness can be defined only ostensively, as what is in common to perceiving, thinking, imagining, recollecting, feeling, etc. For Rand, consciousness is essentially activity: "Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a passive state, but an active process that consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration."
Consciousness, she holds, is not identifiable with or reducible to brain activity--though it clearly depends on brain activity, and she entirely rejected as "mysticism" the idea of a supernatural soul. For her, both matter and consciousness exist, neither being reducible to the other.
The Primacy of Existence over Consciousness
In addressing the fundamental relationship between consciousness and existence, Objectivism holds that existence has primacy over consciousness: existence exists independently of consciousness, and the essential function of consciousness is the grasp of existence. "Consciousness is identification." In this view, consciousness is fundamentally dependent upon existence. Consciousness is inherently of something; without that object (or content), there can be no consciousness: to see, one must see something, to think, one must think about something, etc. After one has been conscious of the external world, one can, secondarily, introspect, and one can recombine memories in imagination. But those reflexive acts can occur only after (and long after) the primary conscious act of sensory perception. Consciousness, on her understanding, has no content of its own prior to contact with external reality.
If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. (Atlas Shrugged, p. 1015)
To be conscious, one must be aware of something; one cannot be "aware only of being aware," without first having been aware of something other than one's own awareness. Rand's primacy of existence is the polar opposite of Descartes' Cogito ("I think, therefore I am"), which is examplifies what Rand calls the primacy of consciousness. Descartes' Cogito represents the idea that one could have knowledge of the existence of one's consciousness prior to one's knowledge that there is anything outside one's consciousness to be conscious of. The primacy of consciousness, held by all "idealist" and subjectivist philosophers, from Plato through (at least) the positivists, holds that existence is fundamentally dependent upon consciousness—that consciousness can be prior to existence and that it somehow creates or molds existence. Rand holds that this amounts to the idea that wishing makes it so.
If consciousness cannot precede existence, the universe as a whole cannot be the creation of a consciousness, nor itself be entirely mental. The principle of the primacy of existence is the metaphysical root of the Objectivist opposition to theism and philosophical idealism. (This argument is laid out in Chapter 1 of Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand<ref name=Peikoff-OPAR />).
The Law of Causality: Entities act according to their nature.
The Law of Causality is a formulation of the observation that there are no disembodied events: every event is the action of an entity or entities, and an entity can act only according to its specific nature. Thus Objectivist philosophy regards the Law of Causality as a corollary of the Law of Identity: "the law of causality is the law of identity applied to action."<ref name="rand" /> The Law of Causality states that things act in accordance with their natures. The way an object behaves when another object contacts it is solely a function of the specific nature (or "identity") of those objects; if one or both object(s) had a different identity, there would be a different action. "A thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature."<ref name=rand /> Note that this conception of Causality does not assert that everything has a cause. Indeed, according to Rand, existence itself--the universe--can have no cause, since then there would have to be something outside of existence to cause existence. This would be incoherent, according to Rand, because to be "outside of" or "prior to" existence is simply not to exist, and what does not exist does not exist.
Objectivism opposes other contemporary interpretations of the Law of Causality, such as "Every event is caused by previous event(s)," because such interpretations lead to paradoxes regarding free will, cosmology etc. Contrary to common contemporary assumptions, the Objectivist position is that "the causal link does not relate two actions."<ref name=Peikoff-OPAR/> According to Rand, an "action" is not an entity; rather, entities act. Therefore, an action cannot be properly regarded as the fundamental cause of another action, as actions do not exist apart from the entities that produce them. To illustrate the Objectivist position, Peikoff said, "It is not the motion of a billiard ball which produces effects; it is the billiard ball, the entity which does so by a certain means. If one doubts this, one need merely subtitute an egg or soap bubble with the same velocity for the billiard ball; the effects will be quite different."<ref name=Peikoff-OPAR/>
A further implication of the Objectivist account of causality concerns explanation: since genuine explanation is causal, nature can only be explained in terms of nature (i.e., without reference to the supernatural).
Mind, Body, Soul
Objectivism rejects the mind-body dichotomy, holding that the mind and body are two inseparable aspects of the conscious organism, as one, integrated entity. Conscious organisms have both mental attributes and physical attributes, and both kinds of attributes participate in determining the causal powers of the conscious organism. To what extent attributes of either kind, or their causal powers, can be explained in terms of the other is a question Ayn Rand regarded as scientific not philosophical.
Objectivism rejects both Marxian materialism and religious spiritualism (Marxists hold that material factors determine men's actions; spiritualists hold that reality is fundamentally spiritual). Objectivism rejects both views: both physical attributes and mental attributes of conscious entities exist and have a determinate identity. Consciousness has causal efficacy--as shown in such simple facts as that you can raise your arm. Neither matter nor consciousness is more real than the other.
Further, the Objectivist doctrine of mind-body integration holds that man's reason and emotions can be in complete harmony. Man is not--or not necessarily--the battleground between warring "parts of the soul." The alleged dichotomy between reason and emotion is, on Rand's theory of emotions, a conflict between two ideas--one conscious and the other an automatized evaluation (producing the emotion). One's emotions are the product of one's thinking (or non-thinking), which is applied (correctly or incorrectly) with lightning-like speed to the issues one confronts, resulting in an emotion. Emotions, consequently, can be changed over time by changing the automatized evaluations that underlie them.
Those irrational wishes that draw you to their creed, those emotions you worship as an idol, on whose altar you sacrifice the earth, that dark, incoherent passion within you, which you take as the voice of God or of your glands, is nothing more than the corpse of your mind. An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu