KyaryPamyu

Indeed. And this position can easily be abused. Suppose someone claims that the creation of the world (e.g. by a god) is supernatural or mystical. We can reply: "No, my friend, you are confused. Naturalism simply means that things behave according to their natures. Since God's nature is to be a creator, his creating of the world is a trivial example of naturalism in action." It follows that playing the "according to its nature" card risks becoming vacuous if we don’t specify what counts as a legitimate nature. If we allow any behavior to be justified by appealing to a thing’s "nature," we drain the distinction between natural and mystical of its meaning. To take a position on volition is to make a statement about the nature of the mind. For example, "mind is unfree because its nature is deterministic"; "mind is free because its nature is volitional." Every philosophy implicitly links a thing’s identity to its behavior. This is the kind of formal truism Voltaire mocked when he quipped: First Doctor: “Most learned bachelor whom I esteem and honor, I would like to ask you the cause and reason why Opium makes one sleep?” Bachelor: “The reason is that in opium resides a dormitive virtue, of which it is the nature to stupefy the senses.” (Le Malade Imaginaire) But this issue—the connection between identity and behavior—is entirely different from the necessary vs. contingent distinction. First, a clarification of the terms. "Contingent" means that something could have been otherwise; for Peikoff, the seat of contingency is the man-made, because "no human choice—and no phenomenon which is a product of human choice—is metaphysically necessary" ("The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," ITOE, 110). "Necessity," on the other hand, means that nothing could have been otherwise, if something is the case then it is necessarily so. At this point, we must take heed: this has nothing to do with the Law of Identity. This law does not imply either determinism or free will. It simply states that if something is real, then something determinate is true of it. For example, determinism might be true of matter, volition might be true of mind etc. If Rand-Peikoff were simply content with saying that the mind is free because it has a 'free nature'—as the Bachelor says that opium anesthetizes us due to its dormitive virtue—then they would've been perfectly right, albeit spouting a formal truism. However, they say this is not enough. No. The volitional nature of the mind must have a "cause"—that is, a deterministic cause that produces the mind's non-deterministic nature. This leads to a logical paradox where the meaning of the terms is obliterated. If it is metaphysically necessary for human actions to be metaphysically contingent, then we are saying that contingency is necessitated. But to say that it is necessary that something be non-necessary is to collapse both terms—necessity and contingency—into meaninglessness. This kind of wordplay is similar to aphorisms like “the only eternal constant is change” or “I’m limited by my lack of limits.” It has nothing to do with Objectivism not recognizing a necessary-contingent distinction, which it does (under the name "metaphysical versus man-made facts")—and indeed must do, because the only metaphysical theory that doesn't recognize this distinction is hard determinism. Rather, it has everything to do with incoherent reasoning masquerading as explanation.

The OP begins with "As I understand," inviting readers to confirm or correct his interpretation: I will oblige. The Objectivist theory you are referring to actually states that claims made without evidence—so-called “arbitrary” claims—have no cognitive status. They therefore resist evaluation as “true,” “false,” “possible,” or “impossible.” This theory has nothing to do with what might be true of the world. As for contingency, whereas some people claim that evolution could have taken a different path, or that Earth might have had two moons under different conditions, Objectivism would say "No, there is no other way things could have been." In short, for Rand-Peikoff, necessity = determinism. The only exception they allow, as @necrovore pointed out, is the special case of human actions and products. That is, whereas the Earth having only one moon was metaphysically necessary, specific human actions are not metaphysically necessary, insofar as each action could have been otherwise. Naturally, we now have to reconcile the claim that everything is necessary with the claim that human actions could have been different. In OPAR, Peikoff tries to do just that. He starts by saying that if human volition did not have a cause, it would ipso facto be mystical. After assuring us that volition is fully natural, he proceeds to reconcile the tension between necessity and volition by arguing to the effect that it's metaphysically necessary for human actions to not be metaphysically necessary—a paradox that resembles saying that God's identity is to have no identity. Moving on to the 2D semantics you mentioned, that theory tries to explain why a proposition that applies in all possible cases can also, at the same time, only apply to a select few cases. Its proposed solution is that the proposition in question actually expresses two distinct propositions. To illustrate this, consider the proposition "water is H₂O." If by water you mean "The clear and drinkable liquid found in lakes and oceans," then this definition might accidentally refer to ammonia (NH₃) on a planet where life forms evolved to drink ammonia from lakes and oceans. On the other hand, if by water you mean "H₂O," then your proposition basically translates to "H₂O = H₂O," a tautology that is true absolutely everywhere, on this planet and in all other possible locations. This is reminiscent of Objectivism’s view on definitions, namely that definitions must evolve and be refined in order to keep up with newly discovered knowledge. 2D semantics shows why some propositions are both analytic (true without exceptions) and synthetic (only true under specific conditions). Objectivism, however, would not care much about that, because Peikoff gives the A-S distinction an idiosyncratic interpretation that seems to suggest that Kant saw empirical (synthetic) truths as not metaphysically necessary. But in fact, Kant shared Peikoff's overly deterministic view of nature. Even for Kant, once empirical conditions are fixed, only one outcome could follow—such as the Earth having just one moon. Where Kant speaks of contingency, he means that the truth of a regular proposition is contingent on empirical facts, whereas the truth of a tautology or a definitional proposition is derived from its abstract form. Out of curiosity, @HappyDays—do you lean toward any particular philosophy, or are you just exploring broadly for now?

Plato said, take any thing that currently exists and you'll notice that it's of a specific "kind." For example, the kind can be a cat. He then argued to the effect that the cats existing right now do not exhaust the kind called "cat," as more cats can be shown to have existed in the past, and more cats will exist in the future. He took this to imply an independence of "kinds" from matter. The totality of independently-existing kinds is called the hyperuranion. Aristotle said, kinds are clearly located in our everyday world, as everything experienceable is of a specific "kind." Therefore, kinds and matter are not independent of each other, but are always together. His theory is called hylomorphism. Ayn Rand wants to "one-up" Aristotle by implicitly appealing to the naturalistic motto: "as if." That is, it's as if kinds are an element of the material world, but nope, essences are epistemological. It's a very lucky thing that our world appears "as if" it contained genuine essences, because we can compare our "epistemological" constructs against the real... er, the apparent essences found in the world. Another theory that denies the existence of universals is called Nominalism. In ITOE, Rand strawmans Nominalism, presenting it as a subjective approach to forming concepts. In truth, Nominalism is loosely similar to Rand's strand of conceptualism: we form "universals" based on resemblances and patterns in reality, not on sheer subjectivity. The contradiction hinted at by the OP, I think, is that Rand praises Aristotle for saying that only particulars (a.k.a. concretes) are real, then immediately criticizes him for saying that universals are real too.

Indeed. This is the subtle point toward which my exercises are building up to. Insofar as we look for the knower of the thinking, we have left out precisely what we were looking for. For, now we must look for the knower of that knower of the thinking, and subsequently for the knower entertaining that knower of this knower of the thinking. In other words, self-consciousness is actually self-consciousnessing. Or to use Western terms, it is Tathandlung, autoctisis, actus purus, or just thinking understood as the act that reveals itself in the revealing.

@Doug Morris, I see. But I believe this objection is pre-empted by what I already wrote in the post from which you quoted. However, maybe you will find the following argument easier to understand. It is much more direct, explicit, and is broken into exercises that can be performed sequentially. @tadmjones, I am thinking less in terms of axioms and more in terms of what the life of thinking consists of. In the following you can see a Hegelian/Fichtean/Gentilean brand of outlook. Advaita puts consciousness at the center stage, whereas this Western viewpoint puts more emphasis on action and autoctisis. However, there is considerable overlap: duality as Maya, unity between individual and the Absolute, self-consciousness as bedrock. It's also plausible that some of the differences are more differences of emphasis. For example, the Kena Upanishad and the Brahma Sutras locate some active agency in the atman itself [1]. On the other hand, underneath the ever-active thinking of the Western Absolute, we could also say that there is something unchanging and non-describable, just like the Brahman. At any rate, the two traditions seem to complement each-other. I have heard Advaitans saying that this stuff cannot even be comprehended outside of a life of full of action, whereas various Western philosophical voices, with their predilection for "jnana yoga," find it striking that humanity's insatiable "Will" might rooted not in a dumb force, as Schopenhauer said, but in a kind of Absolute. --- The following is meant as a fun primer into some classic German and Italian metaphysics. In order to get the most out of it, I recommend ensuring each point is fully understood before proceeding to the next. I From the perspective of the present moment, thinking cannot err. A skeptic that says "I can't know anything" believes that he is stating a truth, i.e. claims that he knows something. A person that says "I think I might be wrong about X" does not even for a moment doubt that he is right to doubt his belief. In short, there is a sort of false modesty going on in human thinking. A person unconsciously attributes, to her thinking, a sort of absolute authority that can only be attributed to an omniscient mind. So when you say "I don't know", you're claiming to know that you're ignorant, but you hold that piece of knowledge as an absolute truth. Verification: Perhaps you doubt what I wrote above. You might reply, for instance: "I am not believing myself to be omniscient or my thinking to be infallible." Fine. Do you doubt, even a tiny little bit, that your denial of your omniscience is true? This is what I meant by false modesty. You unconsciously attribute absolute truth to whatever is thought by you, for if you didn't think it, you would not think it -- a tautology. II As a corollary of the preceding, it is also impossible to think a falsehood. Verification: Suppose you think that God doesn't exist. As per the previous point, you will not, even for a moment, doubt that what you think is true. Therefore, it is also impossible to think otherwise than you do think. For this exercise, I will ask you to think that God does in fact exist, and that religion is perfectly true. Can you do it? You will find that this is not humanly doable. The only possible way this could happen is if you discovered some convincing proof for God's existence, leading you to change your mind and renounce your atheism altogether. Therefore, you cannot think a falsehood. Which is to say, you cannot think what you don't actually think -- again, a tautology. III So although thinking is free (volitional), it is not free to think whatever it wants. There is a limit to what thinking is capable of thinking. But the limit is thinking itself. The reason I can't truly think that the earth is flat is plainly because I'm not actually thinking that. Thinking has absolute faith in itself. Therefore, in order for something to be error, it must begin by being a truth, else it would not be possible to think it in the first place. Verification: Think of a time when you changed your mind about something. While you held the old belief, did you ever actually believe it was false? If you did, then you didn’t truly believe it. But when you do actually change your mind, you are transitioning to a "new" truth. That is, from your actual perspective you are not moving from a falsehood to a truth, but from a truth to a "new" truth. The old truth is now the limit of your thinking, that which you can no longer think because simply because you are not thinking it now. That is, the old truth is now called Error. IV "My thinking" and "my present thinking" are one and the same thing. A thinking other than present thinking is a contradiction in terms. Verification: Think of something you currently believe in. For example, you might think that the Earth is round. Is that something you actually think? Take your time to answer. Suppose you answered "yes, I do think that the Earth is round." You will then find that the question you replied to was identical with this one: "is that what you think currently?" For if right this moment you didn't truly think the Earth is round, you would be thinking otherwise, e.g. that Earth is flat or square or triangular. V Error is that which is "other" than my currently ongoing thinking. Verification: We may make use of a previous exercise: assuming you're an atheist, try to truly, and without pretense, think that Religion is absolutely true. You will find that this is utterly impossible unless you convert from atheism to religion. Now, if you have confirmed the above for yourself, please pay attention to what Religion is. If you cannot think that Religion is true, then what is Religion for you? You will find that Religion is the "what" that your thinking denies. It is the object being thought about. VI As was shown in the very first point, thinking has a megalomaniac confidence in itself. Whatever it thinks, it thinks as true. So how can Religion even become the object that the atheist thinks about? The answer is that thinking doesn't just arbitrarily declare things to be false; this is what parrots do, and their vocalizations are not accompanied by thinking. True thinking must provisionally grant a thesis in order to see if it holds up when verified. If the thesis holds up, it continues to think it, to believe it. If it doesn't, it thinks a "new truth:" the truth stating that the aforementioned thesis was erroneous in hindsight. In any event, it is a perennial progress from truth to new truth. Verification: When you first encountered Religion, did you just blindly assume that Religion is false -- without ever verifying its truth for yourself? You might have answered "No, because conclusions are arrived at by thinking, they're not simply assumed." If so, then the follow up question is: Even today, is "religion" for you just a cacophony of sounds, or does Religion involve your thinking of what that is, and of how granting it leads to problems? VII The previous point was meant to reinforce the insight that, from the perspective of thinking, there is never a movement from error to truth, only from one truth to another truth. If you have any doubts whatsoever about what this means, I suggest referring back to points III and VI until you have clarified this for yourself. Otherwise, you will have trouble with understanding the rest. This study started with the assertion that thinking has absolute and unwavering trust in what it thinks. As the study progressed, we have also found that Error is not the "parrot's" error, but rather: actual thinking moves from a truth to a "new" truth. Only retroactively does it call the "previous truth" a falsity and error. This has lead us to a circle in thinking. I will describe the first half of the circle here, and the completing half in the next section: A religious person starts by truly thinking, with all of her heart, that God exists. If she then discovers that this belief is false, then "belief in God" is not longer something done, something performed in thinking. It is something thought about. It is the "what" being denied, the "object" being coldly entertained by thinking. Verification: Think of something you used to believe, but no longer do. You will find that, for you, this belief is no longer something actually performed by your soul, by your thinking. Now it is just something to think about. VIII Here is the second half of the circle, completing it: thinking needs something to think about. A thinking about nothing is an absurdity. When the now-atheist thinks about her former spiritual state, her current thinking has something to think about, a "what" to entertain in her thinking. Verification: For now, it is sufficient to verify for yourself whether all thinking is, in fact, about something. The full implications of this will be explored in the rest of this study. IX Thinking is a spiritual state and act, something lived. (if you are unclear what this means, please carefully refer to points VII and VIII until you grasp its meaning). When this spiritual state becomes something merely thought about, then this "something" is just the "what" being entertained by current thinking, not something lived by it. For example, the atheist that looks back at her past religious devotion. But her thinking which looks with Olympic serenity at this now-overcome spiritual state: is it not itself a spiritual act? Yes, it certainly is. The destiny of every spiritual act of thinking is to start by being a spiritual act, and then to become the object or "topic" entertained by a new act of thinking. This new state will, in turn, become the topic studied by an even newer thinking act. Like the serpent swallowing its own tail, thought bends back on itself, ever enriching the pool of topics it can entertain. This is why thinking has unshakeable confidence in itself (see point number I): it unceasingly moves from truth, to a new truth, to an even newer truth etc., because each present act of the spirit ends up becoming a mere object entertained by a new act, which becomes the new spiritual act -- only the act itself is something alive. Therefore, the only "true" thinking is the one that is real by happening right now. Thinking is its own object -- the process of self-consciousness. Verification: If you did not know what thinking is, this post up till this point would have been completely unintelligible to you. But since you read this far, then you already know that thinking can be an "existent," a "what" that thinking can entertain. This point is difficult to understand, so I recommend reviewing it a bit more before moving to the next point. X Thinking is not just "rational calculation." It is any mental act that is performed by us and is determinate. By determinate, I mean that thinking is the opposite of an unconscious blank: it "feels" a certain way, it is sensuous. Verification. Have you ever experienced a state of unconsciousness? It is a contradiction in terms. Thinking, if it is thinking, implies sensation. Try verifying Euclid's postulates without constructing any sensation whatsoever. XI When we move from a spiritual state to another one, we do not "lose" the previous state. That overcome state is swallowed into an ever-developing, ever-expanding pool of material to think about, whether in space (material) or in time (historical). Verification. If you pick up a novel and start reading from page 2 instead of the first one, you won't understand much because you don't have the context of the previous page. But if you do start from the first page, this page will "stay with you" when you move to the next page, even if the two points of time exclude each other. That is, when you move on to the next page, the context of the "old" page makes the next page intelligible. By the time you reach the 10th page, the context of all the preceding pages is there in your soul, else you would not understand anything. Likewise, when you listen to music, the meaning of each tone is established by relating it to the previous ones. No piece of music is a piece of music unless thinking weaves together the notes into a web of meaning. Music is not the tones, the sensations -- music is the listener's creation. First, music is created by the composer, then it is recreated by every performer and by every listener who can appreciate it. XII The primordial product of thinking is sensation itself. No sensation = no consciousness. As discussed in section IX, every sensuous spiritual act starts as act, then becomes what is entertained by a new thinking act, ad infinitum. That something has been thought, however, is something irreversible. It is what thinking must live with, the fact which is deaf to the cries of the Spirit. But what is thought right now is in our power. Reality is not what is, but what develops, what becomes. Morality, art and science are the completion, or rather the completing, of reality. Verification. Thinking is not just a passive calculator. Mind influences the world of fact, and, in turn, the world of fact influences mind. Thinking, when passing into fact (the bodily Will), moves the material body. This movement of the material body then becomes the fact which a new act of thinking must take into account as fact. Thinking philosophy over and over physically strengthens the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and various brain networks -- all of which are part of the world of fact, of what was already thought, facts which in turn affect subsequent thinking. XIII Thinking is not in Space or Time, but rather the activity of spatializing and temporalizing. Time is not chronological but eternal — the convergence of past, present, and future in the present act of the mind. When you read this post, it seems as if you are sequentially moving from word to word, when in fact all "past" words are preserved and form a whole, an entirety held in the present. Otherwise, it would be a cacophony of isolated bits of data. Time is a "spatial" organizing of experience into a timeline -- the act of a living spiritual activity. The past of philosophy does not live except in the present instant of reconstructing it in thinking. Every poem and piece of music is outside of time insofar as it is always contemporary, always the present experience of the person constructing it internally. The oneness of the universe, too, is a spiritual activity. The concept of "1" serves to differentiate it from "2", "3" so on and so forth. Therefore, the number "1" is only intelligible if you contradict its meaning -- first, by claiming that this number is not the "only one", and second, because every single number is in fact "one" number. In short, to posit the Cosmos as numerically "1" is to forget what "1" actually means. By contrast, the true and effective unity is the act of fusing items into provisional and displaceable "1's". That is, unity is made, not found. It needs thinking. Verification: Try thinking through the provided examples, and notice what your thinking process is reflexively doing behind the scenes. XIV It is not only sensation -- the feeling underneath the skin -- that makes us feel ourselves (the precondition of consciousness). The encounter with other souls is how freedom comes to be sensed. For unless we restrain our freedom out of respect for other souls like us, we cannot "feel" this freedom. An infinite freedom is a nothing; it is not anything that can be sensed. Verification: Perhaps there is no better metaphor than that classic episode of The Twilight Zone, "A Nice Place to Visit" (Season 1, 1960), where a petty criminal dies and wakes up in a world where everything goes his way. At first, he thinks he's in heaven. He wins every bet, gets every woman, lives in luxury -- but slowly realizes that the predictability, the lack of challenge or struggle, becomes unbearable. Love means nothing unless love is a response to values. In the end, the big twist: this was hell all along. XV Truth is not private. We are all directly participating in the life of Mind's development. The only "truth" that is universal for every single thinking being is the one I enunciated at the very beginning, then repeated ad nauseam throughout this study: thinking attributes to itself a kind of authority that only a universal mind could have. When we grasp that 2+2=4 or we think that a piece of music is great, this is accompanied by a feeling that what we are thinking is not "our" truth, to be distinguished from someone else's truth -- we see this truth as universal, not subjective. Our individuality is then absorbed into the Absolute's thinking. In other words, we see ourselves as the whole of truth concentrated into an individual mind. Thinking and the mirror of thinking (self-consciousness) are two, not one. And as has been shown (XIII) the oneness of number is an abstract "oneness." As soon as you assimilate two into a "one," you contradict yourself because a "one" is a form of distinguishing it from other "ones". Omnis determinatio est negatio. The universe is indefinite, not infinite, expanding as much as thinking travails. To be determinate is to be distinguishable from other determinations - to be a something among other somethings. Both thinking and nature are destined to appear as a plurality: nature in space, and thinking in time. But when inspected, this plurality is nothing other the living act of pluralizing. It is an act, a doing. We then saw that thinking is a process, a restless overcoming of old truth to attain new truth, recasting the old truth as myopic and therefore retroactively erroneous. Within the material world of empirical individuals, there is no philosophy, only philosophies; no theory, only theories. No one is deaf to the thinking of others. The other's thinking, even if it conflicts with ours, is instrumental in our development. In a society, no mind is allowed to rest easy. As soon as mind becomes complacent, a new theory comes out that shakes every presupposition we had at its core. We want to reach others with what we consider to be good arguments, only to see them fall flat -- prompting new questions, answers and revision. Truth is movement that never stops. Verification: Reflect on a time when someone else’s insight transformed how you see the world. Maybe a book, a conversation, or an artwork. That insight might have became your own, but you didn’t generate it in isolation. This is the communion of minds -- not telepathy, but the universal Mind in act. Conclusion of the preceding It is not given for man to rest, because reality is not what is, but what develops and becomes. In a word, it is life. Thinking posits itself by overcoming itself, arrives at truth by overcoming old truth, brings good by overcoming evil, reaches Spirit by overcoming Nature. Its process is the encounter with barriers posited by itself, only to overcome them eternally. It is the most empowering thought: a reality constantly outgrowing itself, always having something unsuspected to look forward to.

@Doug Morris, what is your opinion on that?

I am so sorry for your loss.

Rand's definition of consciousness is an intellectual interpretation of what consciousness is. We may also interpret it in different ways. For example, sensation might be a limit of thinking. By "limit," I mean something not in the control of thinking itself. For this interpretation, we must stress a fact neglected by Objectivism, namely that all thinking (I mean the voluntary activity) is accompanied by consciousness. This means that if I think, I am conscious of doing so. And I also know exactly what I'm thinking. The challenge, then, is to understand how one form of consciousness, namely sensation, is indifferent to another form of consciousness, namely thinking. Why can't thinking modify sensation? The question is important because consciousness is a unity, meaning that it doesn't have "parts" in the conventional sense. True parts are self-sufficient entities, meaning that a crystal, a bezel, a strap etc. would exist even if they weren't assembled into a wristwatch. By contrast, sensation and thinking would not exist apart from each other, nor could they be assembled into a consciousness, because there is nothing to assemble: consciousness is not a composite. It is unity. This unity is extraordinarily difficult to understand. Let's start with experience. For me, sensing is always present, except for cases like dreamless sleep. Thinking, however, is intermittently present, depending on how often I choose to think. Therefore, sensing and thinking are not always in sync with each other. This fact is easy to explain under the composite view of consciousness: since thinking and sensing are two distinct faculties, one can naturally occur without the other also occurring. But the composite theory is wrong. Let us see why. Traditional philosophy posits an abstract-concrete distinction. The idea of a Tree is different from its incarnations, namely the real trees that grow in gardens, forests and jungles. It's all fine, but this is not nearly as urgent as understanding the difference between the mere idea of "sensing" and actual sensing; between the concept of "thinking", and the metaphysical existent bearing that name. No thinking and sensing occurs outside of the present moment. The only valid specimens are those occurring right now. Those are the "concretes" to be distinguished from the abstractions. As soon as you try to describe them, your description becomes obsolete because they have changed, have already moved forward -- an incessant becoming. How different from this, how object-like is the "sensing" and "thinking" of the composite viewpoint! Like two Platonic forms, unsoiled by becoming and corruptibility. Or like the cerebrum and cerebellum of the brain, sitting quiet and still on the neuroscientist's table. To think a new thought is to push the current thought into the past. Let us carefully inspect that proposition. "A new (current) thought pushes the current thought into the past." This is nonsensical under the law of identity, because "new thought" and "current thought" are the same thing, A=A. But thought is not a static identity, like a piece of butcher meat. To deny that current thinking is current thinking is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the thinking doing the denying becomes the new and true "current thinking," whereas the thinking being negated is actually obsoleted. The logical form of thinking, then, could be schematized as: to negate is to affirm. This is where logic and metaphysics meet. To negate that A=non-A is to affirm that A=A. To overcome an error is to reach a truth. To liberate oneself from a pain is to find joy. To look for the spirit is to create the spirit being looked for. As thinking perennially renews itself, it leaves behind a long trail of irreversible, irrevocable thoughts -- what I thought one second ago, one minute ago, one day ago etc. Those are abstractions of thinking, not the real thinking happening right now. And yet, in my present thinking, I am constantly referring to those past beliefs and findings in order to pin them against new thinking and advance my self-understanding. It is an organic unity: present thinking is sent to the graveyard of the past, then comes back from the dead into current thinking, with its pastness and abstract objectivity intact. Abstraction, then, is not what classic philosophy posits it to be. When I distinguish between the idea of "Thinking" and its concrete incarnations -- Galileo's thinking, my friend's thinking, my past thinking -- I am in fact distinguishing between the abstract universal and the abstract concrete. Truly concrete thinking is my own thinking occurring right now, in the present moment. By contrast, the abstract concrete is the form of cold fact. Whatever one might say about it -- that it is determinate (law of identity), that a singular concrete cannot exist and requires others, that what happens in one concrete produces a consequence in the rest -- those statements are about the abstract concrete, not about the concrete thinking which thinks about them. Consciousness is not a composite of sensing and thinking, but a unity of sensing and thinking. Without sensations I would be completely numb to my self. In other words, if there were no sensation, thinking would not feel itself, would be nothing to itself. But sensation is not enough. Awareness of freedom, too, only thrives when it encounters limits. The more we are permitted to do, the less meaningful the freedom, and the less liberated we feel. Once total permissiveness is instated, the impression of freedom vanishes altogether. If I would not feel other souls, other persons for whose sake I should keep law and order, I would not be for myself free. The intellect, however, is not content with mere sensation. It looks for explanations of where sensations come from, and makes sense of them by positing an external cause lying on the other side of those sensations. "Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms." (FTNI, 125) I cannot perceive other people's thinking. If I want to put myself in their shoes, I must work to reconstruct what they feel, in my own thinking. Thus, what I call other people's thinking, is actually my own, even though I call it theirs. But unless I realize that this "my" in "my own thinking" is itself something thought about, I cannot go beyond solipsism. Real thinking is trans-personal, actual, and generative of the empirical "I" -- not the other way around. It is the true universal underneath all objects, not Plato and Aristotle's abstract universal. Thinking existed before I was born. Therefore, the thinking I participate in today is built on millennia of human intellectual effort. But this effort is absolutely nothing at all if its fire is not rekindled today in contemporary discourse. I cannot understand what Objectivism is without reconstructing, argument by argument, the philosophy in my own thinking. The Objectivism I know is the one I had to build up myself. But I still attribute it to Rand, and indeed, I must do so. There are perhaps as many Objectivisms as there are students of it.

There he goes again, talking about objects and things, as if a plurality (a category of the phenomenal realm) applied to the noumenon. We are always aware of one thing only, and that is ourselves. If you don't believe me, try covering your eyes with your palms and observe what's around your room. If you can't see anything, it's because your awareness is directed at nothing other than the affectations of your human body. Echoing the "What is it like to be a bat?" thought experiment, you are permanently stuck in "what it's like to be this body" mode. The body is the primordial "Object-as-such", before it gets schematized in time and space as a multiplicity. Just as I cannot think of my hand as something that could be abstracted from the arm to which it is joined, I cannot think of my body as something that could be abstracted from the total system of Nature. Consciousness of myself consists in a sentient principle, as well as something that is sensed (the body). Togheter, they are the two terms of self-consciousness, the subject and the object. --- Consider the difference between thinking of geocentrism as a theory belonging to someone else (let's say to the people of antiquity and the Middle Ages) and directly thinking that "the earth is the center of the world". If you were to truly think that the earth is central, but afterwards you discovered that this is false, you would no longer be able to think this error for real, but henceforth only as a thinking that belongs to your past self or to other people -- in any event, not to your "I". In the same way, when the intellect (qua act) thinks about itself, it discovers that it erred in treating a formed thought as if it were identical with the process which formed it. By the same law as before, a separation takes place between the "I" and the error. Kant asked what conditions must obtain in order for the unity of self-consciousness to be possible. His answer was that we must be able to differentiate between the I that does the thinking and the object that we think about. But he did not see that the "I" that does the thinking is also the "I" being thought about. This discovery was made by Fichte and elaborated by German Idealism. Next Kant needs to explain how we are able to differentiate between the subjective and objective elements of experience. His answer is that a representation is objective when the subject is necessitated in representing the object in a certain way, that is, when it is not up to the free associative powers of my imagination to determine how I represent it. . . In order for a representational content to be necessitated in this way, according to Kant, is for it to be subject to a “rule.” The relevant rules that Kant has in mind are the conditions something must satisfy in order for it to be represented as an object at all. And these conditions are precisely the concepts laid down in the schema of the categories, which are the concepts of an “object in general.” Hence, if I am to have experience at all, I must conceptualize objects in terms of the a priori categories. (IEP) This is why I said that Kant cannot account for the noumenon. I understand he was weary of being called an illusionist or Berkleyan idealist or whatever, but really, it's irrelevant whether the noumenon is the thinking intellect itself, or a mind-independent X, or something else entirely. The only thing that matters is how an Object as such and in general must be represented in a way that guarantees the apperceptive unity. My opinion stands, namely that Kant took what is true of the phenomenal realm (a material body being causally affected by a plurality of objects) and illicitly "copied" it to the noumenon. This noumenon, which you call a "real existent", is a mere arbitrary presupposition. It is not compatible with the critical method, and flies in the face of what it sets out to accomplish. I applaud you for creating your own edition of one of humanity's cornerstone intellectual achievements. I am curious to read through your annotations.

The initial singularity is hypothesized to have been an undifferentiated unity. This is different from Nature, which is a system of interlocking existents. So, as you'd expect, the laws that apply to a multiplicity collapse in the context of a singularity. No Kantian categories or "contemporary" physical laws, I'm afraid. Actions imply an actor. But the existence of the actor is not chronologically prior to its actions, but rather existentially prior. The act of the singularity was to "break" into a multiplicity. The singularity preceded this act, not chronologically, but existentially. This is why it's so hard to conceptualize. Kant denied that categories can be applied to the thing-in-itself, while also applying the category of cause-effect to the thing-in-itself. This kind of awkwardness is inevitable. To quote Jacobi, "I could not enter into the system without the assumption of the concept of the thing-in-itself and, on the other hand, I could not remain in it with this concept." (Jacobi, Werke, vol. II, p. 304)

No, not the Kantian meaning, just the common one: "many and various." Suppose that "existence exists" merely meant: "at least two things exist". No talk about a universe, cosmos, multiverse or whatever. Could you jump from this modest claim to "the totality of everything is unborn, causeless, non-destructible"? I'd say "yes", even if the total number of entities was literaly two. They key lies in how you'd form the concepts "nothing" and "cause". In my understanding, you can form the concept "nothing" by observing an entity changing. When an entity "sheds its old skin" (form) and takes on a new one, I think: "that form turned to nothing." So, nothingness never refers to the non-being of an entity, but only serves to differentiate what is currently true of an entity (actually, of its "ingredients", since they can branch out into other entities), versus what used to be true about said entity. The concept of "cause", too, rests on observing an entity changing. You can look for the cause of a change, but only if there is a change -- in the entity. Entities precede causes, not the other way around. In order to draw these conclusions, the number of entities you observe is irrelevant. It could be two entities, or a googol entities. That's the only thing my "city, country, planet, cosmos" example was hinting at. The amount of knowledge you need to verify both "existence exists" and its purported logical implications, is very small. Now, let's see how this could be applied to the Big Bang. If you concede my "entities first" conclusion, and conscientiously try to remain within its bounds, then the relationship between our current universe and the initial singularity is genetic, not causal. Where did the initial singularity dissapear? Well, answer this for me: in the case of the plant, where did the seed go, and in the case of the butterfly, where did the catterpillar go? I believe my analysis of "nothingness" shows how to answer this. By the way, would you say that Kant's conception of what metaphysics should be aligns, more or less, with your own? And is what Rand tried to accomplish in metaphysics even possible? By the way, even Kant, who labored intensely at establishing the boundaries of our knowledge claims, simply took something as a given, with no need for further explanation: the thing-in-itself. Just like "nothingness" in Objectivism, Kant's "noumenon" is not a positive, but a purely negative construct: that to which the categories have no applicability, or, what is left over after considering which things do fit into phenomenal experience. But he treats it as if it were a real existent (even ascribing it a name), which is indefensible on Critical grounds.

Again, you might be overcomplicating what is, in actuality, a much simpler argument. Ordinary folks don't often think, or even care, about the cosmos, universe, or multiverse. They don't need to go that far to understand that they are surrounded by many things, not just by one single thing. That manifold is what they colloquially call "world". The world is relative to the individual. That is, for me the world ordinarily means: certain areas of the city I live in, the places I frequent. When I read the news, my world becomes my country, or my planet. When I read about physics or metaphysics, my world becomes the cosmos. If I abstract away this quantitative aspect, I see that in all cases, I am simply occupied with: a manifold of existing things. Causes are part of that manifold. Now, you might reply with this: "a cause can certainly lie outside of that manifold, if your manifold is confined to your city, country or planet, as you said". I reply: for me, there is always only one manifold. As soon as I think about a cause that lies outside of my personal manifold, my perspective enlarges to encompass said cause as well. Whether my perspective is confined to my city or to the universe, I cannot coherently envision a cause lying outside of the totality. The initial singularity, then, was not a cause of the totality, but rather a previous state of the totality itself. Now, you might say: "You are simply assuming that, since your mind cannot envision a cause lying outside a totality, none can exist in the mind-independent world either." I reply: you cannot get around the presupposition of a harmony between the coherently thinkable and the real. Explaining this harmony is a philosophical topic unto itself. For example, under realism, the harmony is typically secured by an argument like the following: 1) Human faculties have survival value; 2) The faculty of reason strives for coherency; 3) Therefore, Nature itself must be coherent, else Reason would not have survival utility. Under idealism, there are various opinions. You already know Kant's take. There is also full fledged idealism, where the world is itself a concept being thought. That is: thinking, in actu, is the sole metaphysical existent. The world, on the other hand, is a term of thought, much like a triangle might be the term of thought in a geometrical exercise. The fundamental characteristic of "what is thought" is its difference from the "act which thinks it". That is, thinking cannot envision the term of thought as being the same as the thinking act, but only as different from it: manifold, spatial, temporal, etc. neither of which apply to thinking itself. Hence, the harmony between the thinkable and the world is also secured. Neither of those theories can be proven, because the method of validation is internal to a philosophy. That is, philosophy cannot "borrow" its validation methodology from another, more fundamental science, because there is no such science. Philosophers are human beings. They are not driven by a "pure" interest in truth for truth's sake, but rather by personal values and emotional attachments. Rand was drawn to common sense realism because she couldn't think of another method to vindicate her extra-philosophical interest in a world where bulletproof knowledge is possible. In VoS (1964), Rand claimed that the Universe is not a "thing". Twelve years later, Peikoff claimed otherwise, in his 1976 lectures that were attended by Rand herself. This is not "a technical inconsistency" as you claim, just the result of continued thought on that matter. Ultimately, the most "reliable" source on Rand's mature philosophy is OPAR, because Peikoff had the important context of Objectivism's evolution across Rand's lifespan.

The concept "something" (contained in "something exists") functions as a placeholder, much like a variable in mathematics. It could stand for a car, a house, a galaxy etc. If there were only one thing, the need for such a placeholder would not arise at all. So, saying that "something exists" saves us from having to pick an example. Coming into sensory contact with a collective of things is enough to get the concept of a "sum". Whether you call it existence or universe, human cognition relies on it.

You might be a little confused here. The reason Rand posits the universe as eternal is not because the law of causality forbids the production of something out of nothing. It's because the universe as a whole (which Objectivism considers to be an entity) is not subject to causality at all. The concept of "cause" is inapplicable to the universe (OPAR, p. 16). In short, the law "does not state that every entity has a cause" (ibid.), and the universe is precisely that kind of causeless entity. So how does Objectivism actually argue for the eternity of the universe? By reference to the concept of totality: "there is nothing outside the totality to act as a cause" (ibid.) Let X be the cause of all existence. Since X already exists, it is not in fact the cause of all existence. Note that Objectivism uses "entity" in a rather loose way, so overthinking it can lead to confusion. An entity means a self-sufficient form of existence—as against a quality, an action, a relationship, etc., which are simply aspects of an entity. . . An entity is perceptual in scale, in size. In other words it is a "this" which you can point to and grasp by human perception. In an extended sense you can call molecules—or the universe as a whole—"entities," because they are self-sufficient things. But in the primary sense when we say that entities are what is given in sense perception, we mean solid things which we can directly perceive. (Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 3) So if you agree with this (conceptual) separation between "a whole" and "the aspects of that whole", then you can call any such whole an entity, even if it's too small or big for your human perception.

This is true, but this is just the way cognition works. I will never call a spherical object "triangular", simply because I know in advance what a triangle really looks like. Cognition itself refuses to ascribe a concept to an object that does not match it. Likewise, when you call something an "entity", you do so based on a match between your concept ("entity") and what you're observing. If, hypothetically, your concept of entity included "imperceptibility", then nothing in your experience would ever match the concept of entity. If causality is part of your concept of entity, then causality is one of the cues that tell you "look, that's an entity." So you know in advance that every entity you'll observe will be causal, because if it isn't, you'll refuse to call it an entity in the first place. The theory that causality is a corollary of identity is interesting, because identity is a very broad concept. Any something, if it's a something at all, is an instance of identity. This includes mental acts. But Rand writes: The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act. . . (FTNI, 151; bold mine) Notice how in a causal context, identity suddenly starts to refer only to entities, i.e. to solid, physical things you can point at. In Objectivism, those are the only existents that can act. So causality is not a corollary of identity, but of entities, the things that remain behind when you abstract away the mind that occupies itself with them. A convenient assumption which ensures O'ism doesn't have to tackle the problems set by Kant.