Eric

For perspective: Western philosophy basically began with Thales of Miletus. Only 4 sentences that remained. Post more bangers.

"Any theory that propounds an opposition between the logical and the empirical represents a failure to grasp the nature of logic and its role in human cognition. Man's knowledge is not acquired by logic apart from experience, or by experience apart from logic, but by the application of logic to experience. All truths are the product of a logical identification of the facts of experience." Leonard Peikoff The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

"The climax of the 'miraculous' view of existence is represented by those existentialists who echo Heidegger, demanding: 'Why is there any being at all and not rather nothing?' - i.e., why does existence exist? This is the projection of a zero, as an alternative to existence, with the demand that one explain why existence exists and not the zero. Non-existentialist philosophers typically disdain Heidegger's alleged question, writing it off as normal existentialist lunacy. They do not apparently realize that, in holding facts to be contingent, they are committing the same error. When they claim that facts could have been otherwise, they are claiming that existence could have been otherwise. They scorn the existentialists for projecting an alternative to the existence of existence, but spend their time projecting alternatives to the identity of existence. While the existentialists clamor to know why there is something and not nothing, the non-existentialists answer them (by implication): 'This is a ridiculous question. Of course there is something. The real question is: why is there something, what it is, and not something else?” Leonard Peikoff, The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

"Contemporary advocates of the theory of 'contingent facts' hold, in essence, the same metaphysics. They, too, hold that anything is possible to an entity and that its actions are unrelated to its nature, that the universe which exists is only one of 'possible worlds.' They merely omit God, but they retain the consequences of the religious view. Once more, theirs is a secularized mysticism. The fundamental error in all such doctrines is the failure to grasp that existence is a self-sufficient primary. It is not a product of a supernatural dimension or of anything else. There is nothing antecedent to existence, nothing apart from it — and no alternative to it. Existence exists — and only existence exists. Its existence and its nature are irreducible and unalterable." Leonard Peikoff, The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

"The view that facts are contingent, that the way things actually are is only one among a number of alternative possibilities, that things could have been different metaphysically-represents a failure to grasp the law of identity. Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific identity, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance. The nature of an entity determines what it can do and, in any given set of circumstances, dictates what it will do. The law of causality is entailed by the law of identity. Entities follow certain laws of action in consequence of their identity and have no alternative to doing so. Metaphysically, all facts are inherent in the identities of the entities that exist (i.e., all facts are "necessary"). In this sense, to be is to be "necessary." The concept of "necessity" in a metaphysical context is superfluous." Leonard Peikoff, The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

“Since concepts are complex products of man's consciousness, any theory or approach which implies that they are irreducible primaries is invalid by that fact alone. Without a theory of concepts as a foundation, one cannot, in reason, adopt any theory about the nature or kinds of propositions. Propositions are only combinations of concepts. The objectiveist theory of concepts undercuts the theory of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy at its root." Leonard Peikoff, the analytic-synthetic dichotomy

“Denying that concepts have an objective basis in the facts of reality, nominalists declare that the source of concepts is a subjective human decision. Men arbitrarily select certain characteristics to serve as the basis, the essentials, for a classification. Therefore, they agree to apply the same term to any concretes that happen to exhibit these "essentials," no matter how diverse these concretes are in other respects. On this view, the concept (the term) means only those characteristics initially decreed to be "essential." The other characteristics of the subsumed concretes bear no necessary connection to the "essential" characteristics and are excluded from the concept's meaning. Observe that while condemning Plato's mystic view of a concept's meaning, the nominalists embrace the same view in a skeptic version. Condemning the essence-accident dichotomy as implicitly arbitrary, they institute an explicitly arbitrary equivalent. Condemning Plato's intuitive selection of essences as a disguised subjectivism, they spurn the disguise and adopt subjectivism as their official theory, as though a concealed vice were heinous but a brazenly flaunted one rational. Condemning Plato's supernaturally determined essences, they declare that essences are socially determined, thus transferring to the province of human whim what had once been the prerogative of Plato's divine realm. The nominalist's advance over Plato consisted of secularizing his theory. To secularize an error is still to commit it.” Leonard Peikoff The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

"The primary historical source of the theory that a concept includes some of an entity's characteristics but excludes others is the Platonic realist theory of universals. Platonism holds that concepts designate non-material essences (universals) subsisting in a supernatural dimension. Our world, Plato claimed, is only the reflection of these essences in a material form. On this view, a physical entity possesses two very different types of characteristics: those which reflect its supernatural essence, and those which arise from the fact that, in this world, the essence is manifest in material form. The first are essential to the entity and constitute its real nature. The second are matter-generated accidents. Since concepts are said to designate essences, and the concept of an entity includes its essential characteristics but excludes its accidents, how does one differentiate accidents from essential characteristics in this particular case? The Platonist ultimate answer is: by an act of “intuition.” Leonard Peikoff The analytic-synthetic dichotomy

"The theory of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy presents man with the following choice: - If your statement is proved, it says nothing about that which exists. - If it is about existents, it cannot be proved. - If it is demonstrated by logical argument, it represents a subjective convention. - If it asserts a fact, logic cannot establish it. - If you validate it by an appeal to the meanings of your concepts, then it is cut off from reality. - If you validate it by an appeal to your percepts, then you cannot be certain of it. Objectivism rejects the theory of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy as false, in principle, at root, and in every one of its variants. Now, let us analyze and answer this theory point by point.” Leonard Peikoff The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

"The theory of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy penetrates every corner of our culture, reaching directly or indirectly into every human life, issue, and concern. Its carriers are many, its forms subtly diverse, its basic causes complex and hidden - and its early symptoms prosaic and seemingly benign, but it is deadly. The comparison to a plague is not, however, fully exact. A plague attacks man's body, not his conceptual faculty, and it is not launched by the profession paid to protect men from it. Today, each man must be his own intellectual protector, in whatever guise the theory of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy confronts him. He must be able to detect it, to understand it, and to answer it. Only thus can he withstand the onslaught and remain epistemologically untouched." Leonard Peikoff The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

"Axiomatic concepts are not a matter of arbitrary choice. One ascertains whether a given concept is axiomatic or not by observing the fact that an axiomatic concept has to be accepted and used even in the process of any attempt to deny it. Axiomatic concepts are the foundation of objectivity." Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

In a mere 82 pages in total, Ayn Rand puts on paper the most important philosophical work, perhaps, in history so far. How the human mind functions.

"Objectivity begins with the realization that man (including his every attribute and faculty, including his consciousness) is an entity of a specific nature who must act accordingly. That there is no escape from the law of identity, neither in the universe with which he deals nor in the working of his own consciousness, and if he is to acquire knowledge of the first, he must discover a proper method of using the second. That there is no room for the arbitrary in any activity of man, least of all in his method of cognition — and just as he has learned to be guided by objective criteria in making his physical tools, so he must be guided by objective criteria in forming his tools of cognition: his concepts. Just as man's physical existence was liberated when he grasped the principle that , “nature to be commanded must be obeyed,” so is his consciousness will be liberated when he grasps that nature to be apprehended must be obeyed. That the rules of cognition must be derived from the nature of existence and the nature, the identity of his cognitive faculty." Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

"All knowledge is processed knowledge — whether on the sensory, perceptual, or conceptual level." "Unprocessed" knowledge would be knowledge acquired without means of cognition. Consciousness (as I have said in the first sentence of this work) is not a passive state, but an active process. Moreover, the satisfaction of every need of a living organism requires an act of processing by that organism, be it the need for air, food, or knowledge. No one would argue, at least not yet, that since man's body has to process the food he eats, no objective rules of proper nutrition can ever be discovered. That true nutrition has to consist of absorbing some ineffable substance without the participation of the digestive system. Since man is incapable of true feeding, nutrition is a subjective matter open to his whim, and it is merely a social convention that forbids him to eat poisonous mushrooms. No one would argue that since nature does not tell man automatically what to eat — as it does not tell him automatically how to form concepts — he should abandon the illusion that there is a right and wrong way of eating (or he should revert to the safety of a time when he did not have to "trust" objective evidence, but could rely on dietary laws prescribed by a supernatural power). No one would argue that man eats bread rather than stones purely as a matter of convenience. It is time to grant to man's consciousness the same cognitive respect one grants to his body, i.e., the same objectivity." Ayn Rand Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

"The motive of all the attacks on man's rational faculty - from any quarter, in any of the endless variations under the verbal dust of all the murky volumes - is a single hidden premise: the desire to exempt consciousness from the law of identity. The hallmark of a mystic is the savagely stubborn refusal to accept the fact that consciousness, like any other existent, possesses identity, that it is a faculty of a specific nature functioning through specific means. While the advance of civilization has been eliminating one area of magic after the other, the last stand of the believers in the miraculous consists of their frantic attempts to regard identity as the disqualifying element of consciousness. The implicit but unadmitted premise of the neo-mystics of modern philosophy is the notion that only an ineffable consciousness can acquire a valid knowledge of reality. That 'true' knowledge has to be causeless (i.e., acquired without any means of cognition)." Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

“In the history of philosophy, with some very rare exceptions, epistemological theories have consisted of attempts to escape one or the other of the two fundamental questions which cannot be escaped. Men have been taught either that knowledge is impossible (skepticism) or that it is available without effort (mysticism). These two positions appear to be antagonists, but are in fact two variants of the same theme, on two sides of the same fraudulent coin: the attempt to escape the responsibility of rational cognition and the absolutism of reality, the attempt to assert the primacy of consciousness over existence. Although skepticism and mysticism are ultimately interchangeable, and the dominance of one always leads to the resurgence of the other, they differ in the form of their inner contradiction — the contradiction in both cases between their philosophical doctrine and their psychological motivation. Philosophically, the mystic is usually an exponent of the intrinsic (revealed) school of epistemology. The skeptic is usually an advocate of the epistemological subjectivism. But psychologically, the mystic is a subjectivist who uses intrinsicism as a means to claim the primacy of his consciousness over that of others. The skeptic is a disillusioned intrinsicist who, having failed to find automatic supernatural guidance, seeks a substitute in the collective subjectivism of others." Ayn Rand Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

"Man is neither infallible nor omniscient. If he were, disciplines such as epistemology - the theory of knowledge - would not be necessary nor possible: his knowledge would be automatic, unquestionable, and total. But such is not man's nature. Man is a being of volitional consciousness: beyond the level of percepts - a level inadequate to the cognitive requirements of survival - man has to acquire knowledge by his own effort, which he may exercise or not, and by a process of reason, which he may apply correctly or not. Nature gives him no automatic guarantee of his mental efficacy. He is capable of error, of evasion, of psychological distortion. He needs a method of cognition, which he himself has to discover: he must discover how to use his rational faculty, how to validate his conclusions, how to distinguish truth from falsehood, how to set criteria of what he may accept as knowledge. Two questions are involved in his every conclusion, conviction, decision, choice, or claim: “what do I know” - and: “how do I know it?” It is the task of epistemology to provide the answer to the “how?” which then enables the special sciences to provide the answer to the "what?” Ayn Rand Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

“Since concepts in the field of cognition perform a function similar to that of numbers in the field of mathematics, the function of a proposition is similar to that of an equation. It applies conceptual abstractions to a specific problem. A proposition, however, can perform this function only if the concepts of which it is composed have precisely defined meanings. If, in the field of mathematics, numbers had no fixed, firm values, if they were mere approximations determined by the mood of their users, so that "5," for instance, could mean 5 in some calculations but 6.5 or 4.75 in others, according to the user's convenience, there would be no such thing as the science of mathematics. Yet this is the manner in which most people use concepts and are taught to do so.” Ayn Rand Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

"The highest responsibility of philosophers is to serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge. This is the responsibility on which modern philosophy has not merely defaulted, but, worse, which it has reversed. It has taken the lead in the disintegration and destruction of knowledge - and has all but committed suicide in the process. Philosophy is the foundation of science. Epistemology is the foundation of philosophy. It is with a new approach to epistemology that the rebirth of philosophy has to begin." Ayn Rand Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

"The requirements of cognition determine the objective criteria of conceptualization. They can be summed up best in the form of an epistemological 'razor': Concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity - the corollary of which is: Nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity." Ayn Rand Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

"The crucial aspect of the cognitive role of concepts: Concepts represent condensations of knowledge, which make further study and the division of cognitive labor possible. Remember that the perceptual level of awareness is the base of man's conceptual development. Man forms concepts as a system of classification whenever the scope of perceptual data comes to be too great for his mind to handle. Concepts stand for the specific kinds of existents, including all the characteristics of these existents, observed and not yet observed, known and unknown. It is crucially important to grasp the fact that a concept is a "classification" which includes the yet-to-be-discovered characteristics of any given group of existence. All of man's knowledge rests on that fact." Ayn Rand Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology