Boydstun

There is an AI group on Facebook at which, a few days ago, I made the following post. In the first Comment to the following, I'll show a response it got from another member of the group. "It has been my experience that when humans make films containing settings of nature or industry from scenes described in literature, they do not measure up to pictures in my mind that I have when reading the text. Pretty sure that will be the same when AI makes scenes from word descriptions, however well. I suspect the images in my mind from text are of only flashing, partial determinacy and tied to feelings from past experience. Such episodes could hardly be expected to be attained from a 3rd person view, I notice."

10/24/23 – CNN report:

Thanks for these remarks, Grames. To be presuming that truth we have attained is incomplete in its capture of facts entails there are facts yet to be learned about things, but the unknown facts need not be characterized as a standing in some mind, specifically, as in a God-like omniscience-perspective. Facts, including facts yet to be learned, are the straightforward and mind-independent place for work of mind (i.e., 'Existence exists' is the prior). You are not alone in your view. Your viewpoint, which I do not share, is among a large intellectual vineyard I'm familiar with in some of its varieties. It is begun in Kant (well, maybe Descartes with less sophistication than Kant), it is a primacy of epistemological conditions, which are putative objective conditions. It has varieties in the post-Kant and need not be whole Kant. I'm pretty sure it is found in Sellars, but his books are on my shelves still unstudied. It is found moderately in Van Fraassen's Constructive Empiricism in philosophy of science. There is a strand in Peirce of that color: “Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief.” I wrote this paper in 2013. I have since written anew (~C~) about that controversial passage on truth in OPAR. I say now that the “and sufficient” bit in Peikoff’s remark is unobjectionable if it is taken in the context of (i) the Objectivist distinction of truth and fact, where the former is a reflector of the latter and (ii) the Objectivist notion of truth as an active ongoing identification. The sufficiency claim is within a broadly correspondence view of truth if it means that empirical-truth unity can become so strong (I give an historical scientific example) that it becomes no longer plausible that it is not a reflection of a unity in the world. I did not simply say “measurement-omission” because it would allow the reader to do a routine glide-over without raising to explicit awareness its detailed meaning. And as I articulated in “Universals and Measurement,” Rand slides back and forth, without registration of it, between two different sorts of what is omitted: One is ‘which member of a designated collection’ (this is nothing distinguishing Rand’s conception of the abstract from any other philosopher’s). The second is ‘which measure-value (along a designated dimension shared by the collection) of which member of a designated collection’ (the original and substantive idea of Rand concerning the abstract). Unless I spell out that second one, it is opaque that that is what I’m intending. I also draw out as often as possible the view of Rand, a correct view, that measurement is not just set-stuff, but that magnitude structures are in the world apart from our set-characterizations such as in numerical capture of those structures with scaled devices (she used 'quantity' where I use 'magnitude'). If I were teaching epistemology, there would first be teaching some proofs in Euclid. In general, however, I know that parts of my writing often put unnecessary burden on the reader to unpack my meanings, and this is due to my haste. I am trying to do better on that by drawing things out more. I succeeded with that improvement in my paper “Kant versus Rand – Much No to Walsh and Miller”* due to cues from my superb editor. I recall something like this when reading Whitehead. One is reading along quite comfortably when suddenly one comes to a paragraph in which there is special vocabulary and the earth shakes and one thinks What on earth is he saying? Rand once remarked that she rejected resorting to neologisms (in Whitehead and Heidegger, there are plenty). I’ve resorting to them only rarely, and those aside, I think all of my “hard to get the meaning” bits, unlike Whitehead's, are repairable if I will slow down. Russell once reported asking Whitehead why he doesn’t make his meaning plainer, Whitehead replied that then he wouldn’t get any philosophy done, and Russell found that reply entirely acceptable. I can sympathize, but I’m trying to do better with the writing.

John Dewey on Perception and Conception

Electron Half-Life * Ayn Rand introduces her principle of identity and its exclusionary character with examples of physical entities being themselves not each other and examples of physical entities capable of contrary traits at different times, but not at the same time: “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” (1957, 1016). From the pervasiveness of such exclusionary identities in any existents, Rand proposed them as basis for non-contradiction being a pervasive right rule for us in identifying things. And she proposed the fact of exclusionary identities in all alterations as basis for the causal, lawful character of all alterations. ”The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action” (1037). Aristotle would continue: A leaf changing from not frozen to frozen requires a leaf continuing to be a leaf across the alteration. Likewise a frozen leaf undergoing changes from being a frozen leaf to being a burning leaf has a leaf continuing to be a leaf across those alterations. When it comes to a leaf becoming ashes or a leaf becoming the impression of a leaf in sedimentary stone, there is no continuing leaf. There must be rather a stuff shared by both a leaf and its ashes or its stone impression. There must be a stuff undergoing alteration from leaf to ashes or stone. Let us have that stuff the same in all such alterations of one kind of thing into another, let us call such a stuff Prime Matter. A leaf may consist of veins and webbing, a man of bones and flesh, but both leaf and man most basically consist of Prime Matter. By this postulation, we can avoid the absurdity that materials can come from nothing or pass into nothing (Phys. 191a23–b17). Change of a leaf to ashes is a change from one kind of thing to a profoundly different kind of thing. As Aristotle casts it, this is a change from one substance to another substance (in his sense of substance). Call such change “substantial change.” In the transformation of leaf to ashes, Prime Matter has changed from one form to another. Call such forms of Prime Matter: Substantial Forms. All natural things are a composite of Prime Matter and Substantial Form on this view. A man, a hand, a neuron, or an electron: each are a composite of Prime Matter and Substantial Form to an Aristotelian metaphysician. So far as we have indirectly measured, an electron has an infinite half-life. An electron will not spontaneously disintegrate into the pure energy of electromagnetic radiation or particles having mass. Of itself an electron is evidently an eternal thing. It can, however, be annihilated—transformed into pure energy—by interaction with an anti-electron. The Aristotelian metaphysician can breath a sigh of relief. And the Aquinas set also, for facts of electrons do not contradict the argument of Thomas to the result that only something not matter could be eternal. Saved by the anti-electron! Here’s the deal from modern eyes, including mine. Conserved quantities such as mass-energy and electric charge fill the role of Aristotle’s Prime Matter as underlying creation-annihilation transformations of matter. Drop Prime Matter from physics. Drop that part of metaphysics from physics. In place of Substantial Form put the Identity from "Existence is Identity." Drop metaphysical essences in the identities of things. Physical characteristics and relationships suffice. The world stands before us without being a composition of Prime Matter and Substantial Form. It stands before us and with its definite character, physical and metaphysical, without a supporting, more fundamental immaterial being.

Thank you, Jordan Bruneau, for writing this and making a notice of it here. I have not read it yet as I'm pausing over getting to the trial subscription of the Register, whose rate is pretty steep once the $1 trial period passes, and the method of cancellation is burdensome and worrisome.

That book by Tylor was published in 1871. Beyond nice writing and on to the mountains of anthropology research since then, one I heartily recommend: Religion in Human Evolution – From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (2011, Harvard) by Robert Bellah.

Space, Rotation, Relativity – Descartes (and scroll down). 1995

Objectivist Concept of Truth (2013) Rand wrote in 1966: “Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality. Man identifies and integrates the facts of reality by means of concepts. He retains concepts in his mind by means of definitions. He organizes concepts into propositions—and the truth or falsehood of his propositions rests, not only on their relation to the facts he asserts, but also on the truth or falsehood of the definitions of the concepts he uses to assert them, which rests on the truth or falsehood of his designations of essential characteristics.” (ITOE 48) Brand Blanshard’s book Reason and Analysis appeared in 1962. (Leonard Peikoff made some use of that book and an earlier one by Blanshard The Nature of Thought in his dissertation completed in 1964.) It was reviewed favorably by Nathaniel Branden the following year in The Objectivist Newsletter. Branden understood that Blanshard was some sort of absolute idealist, but the book offered access to contemporary positivist and analytic philosophy (including the analytic-synthetic distinction), and it offered criticisms of them, which Objectivists might join. In Rand’s view, Branden said, in his Basic Principles of Objectivism lectures (c. 1968): “All knowledge is contextual, which means: has to be integrated, has to form a logical, consistent, non-contradictory whole. / ‘All thinking’, states Galt, 'is a process of identification and integration’. All logic, then, is a process of context-keeping. No conclusion of a formal logical argument can be considered true out-of-context. Only a full context can determine its truth or falsehood.” (Branden 2009, 75) Peikoff wrote “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the idea’s truth” (OPAR 171). Peikoff maintained that unless his proposition is true, the fact that we don’t know everything can be turned into the skeptical result that we don’t know anything. If we have no means of possessing any limited knowledge not susceptible to being shown false in the future, no means of knowledge sufficient for truth, then the skeptic can say “for all we know, all of our limited knowledge is false.” “Logical processing” in Rand’s philosophy, as is well known, includes a lot and is essential to truth and objectivity. To know the number of oval-head #4 five-eighths-inch brass screws I have remaining in their box, I need to count them. That process and result will require not only correspondence, but the right connections among the parts of the process of counting. Moreover, the process of counting is not only necessary; counting, with all my counting crosschecks, is sufficient for truth about the number of screws. Truth at a conceptual level of cognition is necessarily an integration, and if it were entirely free of any misidentifications in all its network, it would necessarily be true. That is, in this limit of cognitive performance, the cognitive conditions are sufficient for truth. That is Rand's picture. I say Peikoff's establish should stand between verify or confirm, on the one hand, and constitute, on the other; therewith he was not saying something beyond Rand’s picture of ’57 and ’66–’67. I take issue with Rand’s philosophy on the issue neatly captured in Peikoff’s statement. To start, the “an idea” and the “the idea” will usually have evolved with the advance of knowledge. That all animals are mortal was a truth with the Greeks as with us, but what we mean by animal and mortal have been considerably revised and improved over what it meant to them. The reference class of what is meant by animal has broadened and understanding of what is living process and its cessation has expanded tremendously. But Peikoff’s statement can likely be elaborated so as to take all that into account without substantive retreat. I attended Lecture 6 in Peikoff’s 1992 series The Art of Thinking. Peikoff remarked there, allowing for inaccuracy in my notes, that he does not see the preface “in the present context of knowledge” as sensible for: (i) perceptions or memory, (ii) automated conceptual identifications (table in contrast with hostility or pneumonia), and (iii) axioms (philosophical [very delimited; widest framework] and mathematical [very delimited subjects]). Saying “in the present context” in the cases where it is sensible is not proof against error. One can have been fully rational to have held views based on errors one later sees. However, error is not inevitable for the methodologically conscious adult. That is what I have in my notes. Suppose one’s knowledge were based on perceptual observation and correct reasoning upon them, including correct use of mathematics in application to them. Then it would seem fair to say that “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the idea’s truth” (OPAR 171). Perfect conceptual identifications, even though not all the identity of their referents are known, if perfect in all presently known connections with observations and with all other perfect conceptual identifications, are sufficient to establish the conceptual identification’s truth. Leaving aside the three categories of knowledge set aside in Lecture 6, there remains much in our knowledge that is also virtually perfect knowledge, because it has been so thoroughly tested for contradiction in its many connections, and because these durable propositions have been given ever more exact delimitation with the advance of science. “All animals are mortal” or “I must breathe to live” are examples. Even for a given context of knowledge, our integration and checking for contradictions is an incomplete work in progress. Meanwhile, we are adding new information, more context for knowledge, and beginning its integration and checking for contradiction. For all conceptual identifications in a condition of significantly incomplete integration and checking, correct logical processing is insufficient to establish truth (cf. Peikoff in Berliner 2012, 303–4). At first blush, this is no problem for the Rand-Peikoff view, for that just means that the knowledge is not to be rightly taken as certain knowledge. Rand’s picture in Peikoff’s bold statement is significantly incorrect in my view because as one’s (scientific) knowledge grows one’s knowledge of what was one’s previous context of knowledge also grows. One continues to learn what were the ways in which one's previous generalizations were over-generalizations (and in what ways they were inexplicit, indefinite, or vague). There was no reason to suppose that the Galilean rule for addition of velocities was only a close approximation to the low-velocity portion of a different rule for addition of velocities more generally, no reason until the electrodynamical results in the nineteenth century. There was no reason to post a specific caveat before then, along the lines of "for all velocities we've experienced so far." It remains that in present truth there is past truth and so forth to the future. We cannot know entirely which elements of scientific truth today will stand in a hundred more years of advance nor how those elements will have been transformed and connected with new concepts. Our repeatable experiments will still be repeatable (notwithstanding the unfounded imaginings of the Hume set), whatever new understanding we bring to them. Peikoff is correct when he writes “No matter what the study of optics discovers, it will never affect the distinction between red and green. The same applies to all observed facts, including the fact of life” (1991, 192). Peikoff’s sufficiency clause—its application to all cases for which the proviso of delimited truth-context pertains—is not necessary to foil skeptical maneuver. That rational thinkers sometimes have very reasonably taken something for true that is later shown to be false does not justify skepticism. Every such showing of falsehood is a showing of truth and a showing that skepticism concerning the type of knowledge at hand is false. Neither does the skeptic, nor the relativist, have justification for skipping to the contradictions of earlier science with later science, skipping, that is, the context of non-contradiction as a norm, the everywhere-context of things as they are and our ability to know them. Rand read John Hosper’s book An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis in 1960–61. Rand’s firm anchor of truth in correspondence and the primacy of existence comes through in her marginalia on truth, on propositions, on definitions and tautology, and on logical possibility (Mayhew 1995, 68–70, 75–80). Rand objected to shuffling the question “What is truth?” into “What are true propositions?”. She jotted: “Truth cannot be a matter of propositions, because it is a matter of context” (Mayhew 1995, 68). Like Aristotle’s, Rand’s is a substantial theory of truth. It pertains to the real, the cognitive agent, and the right relation between them. It declines linguistic stances as well as deconstructionist and relativistic stances towards truth. Aristotle’s writings “present truth in the context of a multifaceted account of knowledge that includes epistemological and psychological dimensions and in which truth directly pertains to issues of meaning, reference, intentionality, justification, and evidence . . .” (Pritzl 2010, 17). Rand can agree with Aristotle that being is the single constant context of truth. She can agree with Aristotle in holding truth to be not only saying of what is that it is, but saying of what is what it is (Metaphysics IX.10). However, she should deny Aristotle’s views that intellectual truth is an irreducible type of being and that “cognition is an identity of knower and known” (Pritzl 2010, 17). Rand’s has an integration element in her correspondence theory of truth (Peikoff 2012, 12–15). Integration is essential for truth in Rand’s theory. Fact is interconnected and multilayered in Rand's picture. Fact caught in mind will be truth, and truths will not be isolated in their facts nor in their relations to other truths. In Rand’s metaphysics, every existent stands in relationships to the rest of the universe. Every existent affects and is affected (ITOE 39). Rand does not go so far as the coherence theorist who would hold that relations to other things is what constitutes what something is. Concerning the historical roots of the integration element in Rand’s theory of truth, I think the main root is not the coherence views of absolute idealists, nor of Spinoza before them, but the views of Aristotle. “Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality. . . . The truth or falsehood of [man’s] propositions rests, not only on their relation to the facts he asserts, but also on the truth or falsehood of the definitions of the concepts he uses to assert them, which rests on the truth or falsehood of his designations of essential characteristics.” (ITOE 48) Rand’s conception of the connectivity of facts for truth and her requirement of definitions designating essential characteristics for concepts in assertions are among the integration elements in Rand’s theory. Her theory is revised Aristotle. Aristotle wrote that "a definition is a phrase signifying a thing's essence" (Topics 101b37). Fundamentally, "the essence of each thing is what it is said to be in virtue of itself. For being you is not being musical; for you are not musical in virtue of yourself. What, then, you are in virtue of yourself is your essence" (Metaph. 1029b14-16). For Aristotle the essential predicates of a thing say what it is, what it is to be it. To say that man is musical does not say what man is. It says something truly of man, but it does not say what is man. Thus far, Rand concurs. "A definition must identify the nature of the units [subsumed under the concept being defined], i.e., the essential characteristics without which the units would not be the kind of existents they are" (ITOE 42). Moreover, the essential characteristic of a kind under a concept is "the fundamental characteristic without which the others would not be possible. . . . Metaphysically, a fundamental characteristic is that distinctive characteristic which makes the greatest number of others possible; epistemologically, it is the one that explains the greatest number of others" (ITOE 45). Aristotle held that all natural bodies are a composite of matter and form. He took form, rather than matter, to be what makes a thing the kind of thing it is. Essence is a form (Gill 2010, 120; Peikoff 1985; Witt 1989, 116–19; Bolton 2010, 40–46). Rand rejected this component of Aristotle’s metaphysics (ITOE Appendix, 286). "Aristotle held that definitions refer to metaphysical essences, which exist in concretes as a special element or formative power. . . . Aristotle regarded 'essence' as metaphysical; Objectivism regards it as epistemological" (ITOE 52). For Aristotle what makes gold gold or an animal cell an animal cell is a metaphysical essence, a metaphysical form. Metaphysical essential forms in Aristotle’s account are traditionally seen as universals; Charlotte Witt argues they are particulars (1989, chap. 5). In our modern view, the essence of the chemical element gold, that in virtue of which it is gold, is: having such-and-such numbers of protons and neutrons bound in a nucleus and the electrons about it. That is what makes its further distinctive properties possible. The essence of a living animal cell is that it offsets the potentially catastrophic drive of water inward through its wall by pumping sodium ions out through its wall. That is what makes possible its further distinctive properties (distinctive, say, from a living plant cell). These essences are physical. The essence of a human being—rational animality—is physical and mental. These are all essences in Rand's sense. They are physical or mental, but not metaphysical in the form-sense of Aristotle's essences. For Rand "an essential characteristic is factual, in the sense that it does exist, does determine other characteristics, and does distinguish a group of existents from all others; it is epistemological in the sense that the classification of 'essential characteristic' is a device of man's method of cognition" (ITOE 52). Proper essential characteristics in Rand’s theory of definitions required for truth use factual characteristics about a thing to state what it is. Aristotle, in contrast, did not take the essence of a thing to be one of its characteristics among others. He did not take it to be a characteristic of a thing. The form that is the essence of a thing, the form that makes it what it is, is prior in every way to the individual thing it makes possible (Witt 1989, 123–26). In Rand’s metaphysics, entity, not substance, is the primary existent. Though characteristics and relationships presuppose entities, an entity is nothing but its characteristics and relationships, for entities, like all existents, are nothing but identity. Rand’s realism of definition and essence reaches rock bottom of reality, while dropping some Aristotelian doctrines of substance, essence, and form. Rand contended that one must never form any convictions “apart from or against the total, integrated sum of one’s knowledge” (1961, 26). That integrated sum is one’s entire cognitive context, “the entire field of a mind’s awareness or knowledge” (ITOE 43). We have noted Rand’s statement “No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum total of his knowledge” (AS 1016). To the extent that his mind deals with valid concepts, “the content of his concepts is determined and dictated by the cognitive content of his mind, i.e., by his grasp of the facts of reality” (ITOE 43). It is not the integration that makes the content true, though the integration is necessary to truth, necessary to the grasp of fact. Peikoff writes “If one drops context, one drops the means of distinguishing between truth and fantasy” (OPAR 124). That is partly due to the nature of facts. The context of knowledge is the context of grasped fact, which is a context of fact. Facts have contexts, independently of our grasp of them (cf. OPAR 123). The contextual character of truth in an Objectivist account should be hands-on-world, rather as Rand’s essential characteristics of concepts are hand-on-world. Recall that in Rand’s theory of definition, the fundamental characteristic serving as the essential characteristic of a concept is both metaphysical and epistemological; it tells relations of dependency in the world and relations of explanation in the mind. The relations of context in the world will naturally include more than relations of dependency, and relations of context in the mind will include more than relations of explanation. My contention that the essential characteristic(s) of a concept, in Rand’s epistemology, is not only epistemological, but metaphysical, is consistent with Rand’s text saying that an essential characteristic is factual and does determine other characteristics, its being fundamental being a metaphysical fact. However, on the face of it, my contention contradicts Rand’s statement “Aristotle regarded ‘essence’ as metaphysical; Objectivism regards it as epistemological” (ITOE 52). In Rand’s view, “the metaphysical referent of man’s concepts is not a special, separate metaphysical essence, but the total of the facts of reality he has observed, and this total determines which characteristics of a given group of existents he designates as essential” (ITOE 52). She goes on immediately to say in what sense an essential characteristic is factual and in what sense it is epistemological. Rand is excluding from her concept of an essential characteristic the overblown sort of metaphysics Aristotle gives to essence, and she is introducing epistemological factors that bear on correct identification of an essential characteristic. She is not excluding metaphysics as a crucial, determining factor in the identification of essential characteristic(s). I concur with Rand. Essence as in her conception of an essential characteristic is not metaphysical in the full sense of the metaphysical that Aristotle gives to essence. However, in a less ponderous sense of the metaphysical, Randian essential characteristics are both metaphysical and epistemological. Rand requires a metaphysical basis for the designation of essential characteristics for our concepts of things. Furthermore, an essential characteristic should be not only a fact distinguishing a group of existents from all others within the present context of human knowledge; the essential characteristic of items under a concept should be additionally a fundamental one, the fundamental one on which the greatest number of the items’ other species-differentiating characteristics depend. This is metaphysical structure. Rand should agree with Aristotle that capability for learning grammar would be an improper distinction among animals for capturing the essence of that which is man (Top. 102a18–30; ITOE 49). This is due to facts of dependency. This is metaphysical structure. It would not do in Rand’s epistemology to follow Descartes in his idea that the primitive essence of matter is extension. That is a good distinguishing and logically necessary characteristic of matter (provided we take extension to stand for all aspects of spatiality). But it ignores the ontological primacy of entities among existents. And space is an existent. Concrete relationships are existents. A proper definition of matter must set it correctly in its relation of non-containment to consciousness (ITOE Appendix 247–50), and it must situate matter in relation to entities. Matter can be rightly defined in that second aspect partly by finding a fundamental distinctive commonality—say mass-energy—for all materials, but the standing of materials in relation to entities must also be captured in a proper definition of matter. There is much metaphysical structure in Randian definition according to essentials. Consider too a definition of solidity. I like to define it as a state of matter in which there is resistance to shearing stresses, or more exactly, in which there is an elastic zone of resistance to shearing stresses. This definition states physical relationships. It reflects metaphysical structure and physical structure within that metaphysical frame (assuming a proper concept matter). It reflects also context of cognition (and of potential vital action). That is to say, it reflects also the present state of knowledge of matter, an epistemological circumstance. Rand allows that with further understanding of matter I may have to expand my definition of solidity. Expanding “does not mean negating, abrogating or contradicting; it means demonstrating that some other characteristics are more distinctive” of solidity (ITOE 47). The qualification of a characteristic to be taken for essential continues to rest on the identities given to our consciousness so far—including relations of difference, similarity, and dependency—identities basing the economical scope of cognition and effective action we attain by rightly recognizing them. I have spoken of relations of context in the world and relations of context in the mind. The membership relation is one relation among contents of mind that is not that relation among the mind-independent, concrete objects corresponding to those contents. That is entailed when philosophers say with Aristotle that what-such depends on this-such, but not vice-versa, or when one says with Rand that only concretes exist in reality. The binding of membership relations to concrete factual relations, though necessarily not by complete identity with the latter relations, is surely a major impetus for integration in abstract knowledge and integration of abstract knowledge with experience. Rand’s cast of concept-class membership relations as analyzable in terms of suspension of particular values in mathematically scaled relations—relations that can express concrete magnitude relations in the world—is a grand structure for integration beyond non-contradiction. It makes the meaning of correspondence in “truth as correspondence with facts” more specific, and it accords with the success of science in improving correspondence by use of mathematics. References Aristotle c. 348–322 B.C. The Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes, editor. 1983. Princeton. Berliner, M., editor, 2012. Understanding Objectivism, Leonard Peikoff’s Lectures. NAL. Blanshard, B. 1962. Reason and Analysis. Open Court. Bolton, R. 2010. Biology and Metaphysics in Aristotle. In Lennox and Bolton 2010. Branden, N. 2009. The Vision of Ayn Rand. Cobden. Gill, M. L. 2010. Unity of Definition in Metaphysics H.6 and Z.12. In Lennox and Bolton 2010. Hospers, J. 1953. An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. Prentice-Hall. Lennox, J. G., and R. Bolton, editors, 2010. Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle. Cambridge. Mayhew, R. 1995. Ayn Rand’s Marginalia. ARI. Peikoff, L. 1985. Aristotle’s “Intuitive Induction.” The New Scholasticism 59(2):185–99. ——. 1991. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dutton. ——. 1992. The Art of Thinking. Lecture. ——. 2012. The DIM Hypothesis. NAL. Pritzl, K. 2010. Aristotle’s Door. In Truth – Studies of a Robust Presence. Catholic University of America. Rand, A. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. Random House. ——. 1961. The Objectivist Ethics. In The Virtue of Selfishness. 1964. Signet. ——. 1966–67. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. 1990. Meridian. Witt, C. 1989. Substance and Essence in Aristotle. Cornell.

(This is the final issue I’ll address concerning Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.) The Arbitrary ~A~ In her Introduction to the Objectivist Epistemology, Rand writes: “There is no room for the arbitrary in any activity of man, least of all in his method of cognition . . .” (1990 [1967], 82). On the face of it, this is false, strictly speaking. In geometry there is a sort of arbitrary that is useful and is indeed required in order to attain the necessary universality we win in geometric theorems. To prove that for any triangle in the Euclidean plane its three angles sum to two right angles, we draw an arbitrary triangle, label its vertices for reference to angles and sides of the triangle, state instructions for additional constructions projecting from sides of the triangle, and make true statements about angles and lines in the figure, including references to assumptions in this geometry preceding this proof. It is important that the triangle drawn and talked about is not thought of as an entirely definite, precise, particular one; the drawn figure is a representation (a schema) of the concept “triangle” under Rand’s some-any locution: the triangle being thought about is thought of as having some set of specific angles and sides, but any such set that a triangle can have.[1] It is from that sort of arbitrary pick of a triangle in the setting out of the proof (not just this 2R proof, but all of the other ones in one’s high school geometry) that creates the guarantee that the proof holds for ALL triangles. That standard use of the concept arbitrary in geometry is not a resort to the arbitrary Rand is denouncing in her statement I quoted. Rather, she is rejecting the arbitrary in thought such as baseless assumptions or claims. This is the resort to arbitrary routinely counted as a demerit by philosophers. This arbitrariness is rooted in subjectivism or ineptness, I say, and it is often a reality-avoiding technique. Rand rejected also any claim that philosophical axioms, like it or not, are arbitrary or that concepts are arbitrary social conventions (1957, 1040; 1970, 83). Her picture was that concepts are tools properly having objective structure wherewith we can grasp reality, more and more of reality. “The requirements of cognition forbid the arbitrary grouping of existents, both in regard to isolation and to integration” (Rand 1990, 70). One needs to avoid arbitrary integration of concepts into wider concepts by obliterating their objective essential differences in one’s current context of knowledge. Taking the ability to run as man’s essential characteristic and subsuming that concept under “running entities” alongside the species “running river,” “running stocking,” and “running movie” results in “cognitive stultification and epistemological disintegration” (ibid., 71).[2] ~B~ Nathaniel Branden points out that Rand’s ethics—with its basis in biological facts and the factual relation of life to value—brings forth objective guideposts for what one ought to do. “By identifying the context in which values arise existentially, Ayn Rand refutes the claim—especially prevalent today—that the ultimate standard of any moral judgment is ‘arbitrary’, that normative propositions cannot be derived from factual propositions” (1962, 27).[3] Rand “demonstrates that rights are neither arbitrary nor ‘stipulational’ nor provisional, but are logically derivable from man’s nature and needs as a living being” (1962, 48). “If one introduces an arbitrary element into one’s consciousness, if one introduces into one’s knowledge and convictions an idea that one holds without rational justification, an idea which is not derived from reality, and which is not subject to rational examination, . . . . such an idea cannot be placed within a logical hierarchy or structure of concepts. It acts to paralyze the thinking process by setting up irreconcilable conflicts.” (1962, 94) Branden writes in 1963: “To pronounce a thing unknowable, one would have to know enough about it to justify one’s pronouncement—but then the pronouncement and the justification would be in contradiction. If one makes such a pronouncement or any pronouncement, without knowledge to justify it, then this is plain irrationalism.” Arbitrary, baseless pronouncements are irrational. In Objectivist philosophy, the arbitrary in its negative valence is opponent to objectivity, I observe. When Objectivism defends the feasibility and worth of objectivity in the disciplines of metaphysics, epistemology, or ethics, the objectivity opponent we know as the arbitrary is implicitly condemned. In his Basic Principles of Objectivism lectures, Branden reiterates Rand’s stand that philosophical axioms must not be arbitrary (72). “Today it is fashionable among modern philosophers to assert that the axioms of logic are ‘arbitrary’, but this is to confess that one has forgotten how the concept of ‘the arbitrary’ was originated. An arbitrary idea is one accepted by chance, caprice, or whim. It stands in contradistinction to an idea accepted for logical reasons, from which it is intended to be distinguished. The existence of such a concept as an ‘arbitrary idea’ is made possible only by the existence of logically necessary ideas. . . . / To maintain that logic is arbitrary is to empty the concept ‘arbitrary’ of meaning.” (Branden 2009 [1960’s], 73–74) All logic “is a process of context-keeping. No conclusion of a formal logical argument can be considered true out-of-context. Only a full context can determine its truth or falsehood. And in the full context, the logically true is the factually or existentially true. . . . If a statement is true at all, it can only be true of reality. There is nothing else . . . . to which the concept ‘truth’ can meaningfully or validly be said to pertain.” (ibid., 75–76) A bank robber is not being logical simply because “he devises an ingenious, complicated scheme for robbing a bank. It is true that the bank robber does employ logic in his calculations, but this does not mean that his action, in the total context of his knowledge, was a logical one to undertake” (ibid. 76). To repeat: “No conclusion of a formal logical argument can be considered true out-of-context.” It follows, I observe, that the premises for a full-context true conclusion must each be truths in full-context. Where have we seen a full-context requirement for authentic deductive validity before? We saw it upstream in this thread in John Dewey 1938. I don’t know if Rand or Branden had read that book, but their associate Leonard Peikoff surely had, as evidenced in his references to it in his Ph.D. dissertation (1964). “Every claim, statement, or proposition has to be based on reality. Nothing may be claimed causelessly, groundlessly, arbitrarily, by whim” (Branden 1960’s, 78). ~C~ Concerning truth, the most controversial remark of Peikoff in OPAR was addressed by Merlin Jetton thirty years ago (1993) in his hefty essay “Theories of Truth.” Peikoff maintains: “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the idea’s truth” (1992, 171). Jetton 1993 saw that “and sufficient” clause as an element along the line of a coherence theory of truth in which coherence is not only necessary to establish truth, but suffices to establish truth. Rand has a correspondence theory of truth: “Truth is recognition (i.e., identification) of reality” (1967, 48), although, Jetton notes, her requirement for truth that concepts be based on essential characteristics within one’s context of knowledge is a kinship with the coherence theory of truth (Jetton 1993, 99) Coherence among concepts, however, for Rand, might fairly be said to be an indicator of truth, but only because there is unity in the world and knowledge in good correspondence to the world should capture that unity. Unlike the coherence view of truth in Leibniz, Hegel, Bradley, or Blanshard, the coherence element in Rand’s view does not constitute truth. Peikoff’s “and sufficient” seems to slip into constitution of truth by its coherence. I say that Peikoff’s controversial remark should be regularized in Objectivism firstly by setting it within the Objectivist distinction between truth (recognitions, identifications) and mind-independent facts of the world. Truth, in Peikoff’s view, does not make or constitute any facts; truth reflects facts. Secondly, truth, in the Objectivist view, in kinship with a strand in Dewey, is an ongoing active process of identification. Aristotle’s picture of invisible rotating celestial spheres carrying heavenly bodies across the sky had a lot of coherence to it. But not enough to be so sure of its correspondence with the facts. The coherence of all the evidence for atoms of the chemical elements sufficed by 1908 for complete assurance of correspondence with the facts (Boydstun 1991, 14). If all I could say in support of my claim of atomic elements was that I’d be tickled by such a fact, you should sensibly move on to real sources of information.[4] I’d like to close the series of my comments in this thread on OPAR with some personal notes. Well done. I knew Peikoff could deliver a good systematic presentation of Rand’s philosophy, and though it took long hard work, he got it done. Although I’ve significant disagreements with the philosophy of Objectivism, I know it is greatly beneficial to personal life for those who sort in out and keep its gold, and, heaven knows, the world needs Objectivism. I saw an interview in which Nathaniel Branden remarked that he thought OPAR a good representation of Rand’s philosophy. Barbara Branden remarked once online that she found the work dry. I don’t. Most precisely stated philosophy is found to be rather dry by many a good mind. OPAR cemented for a wide educated public that Rand indeed had put forth a systematic philosophy, what it was, and its honest and life-giving character. I don’t think that OPAR is all that difficult to read and comprehend, but I have a sense of what a difficult row to hoe was the bringing it about. To that effort, I’ll close where Spinoza closed: “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” Notes [1] This conception of what is the epistemological character of the constructions in synthetic geometry is original with me. The pertinent some-any locution here is the more elementary one: this one thing or that one thing . . . any one such thing. It happens to be also the some-any specialized to the distinctive one in Rand’s theory of concepts: this set of measure-values (lengths, angles) or that set of measure-values . . . any such set of measure-values. [2] Rand thought of concepts as implicitly containing propositions. Furthermore, to most concepts, according to Rand, there corresponds a definitional proposition indicating the nature of items falling under the concept and their locus among items not falling under the concept. [3] Branden acknowledges his indebtedness to his associate Leonard Peikoff for identification of two trends in the history of ethical theory before Rand which on their face offer objective moral standards: (i) Claim an innate universal impetus in humans, such as impetus for happiness or pleasure or serenity or self-preservation. (ii) Claim that individuals are a fragment of a transcendent reality more real than the one in which we plant potatoes, and claim that virtue consists in acting in accordance with the purposes in that transcendent reality or with the governing principles of that alleged reality. Neither of those claims have successful rational support for being true. Both of them locate values predetermined in man’s nature, rather than deducing values from the facts of man’s nature. [4] A good many careful objections to Peikoff’s treatment of arbitrary assertions have been raised by Robert Campbell in his 2008 and 2019. References Boydstun, S. 1991. Induction on Identity. Objectivity 1(3):1–51. Branden, N. 1962. The Moral Revolution in Atlas Shrugged. In Who Is Ayn Rand? New York: Random House. ——. 1963. Is There Any Validity to the Claim that Certain Things Are Unknowable? The Objectivist Newsletter V2N1. ——. 1960’s. The Basic Principles of Objectivism (lecture series). Transcribed in The Vision of Ayn Rand. 2009. Gilbert, AZ: Cobden Press. Campbell, R. 2008. The Peikovian Doctrine of The Arbitrary Assertion. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 10(1):85–107. ——. 2019. The Return of the Arbitrary. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 37(1):83-134. Dewey, J. 1938. Logic – The Theory of Inquiry. Volume 12 in John Dewey – The Later Works, 1925–1953. J. Boydston, editor. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Jetton, M. 1993. Theories of Truth – Part 3. Objectivity 1(6):73–106. Peikoff, L. 1991. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton. Rand, A. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House. ——. 1967. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The Objectivist V6N2. Reprinted with additional materiel in 1990 (pages cited are from this edition) edited by H. Binswanger and L. Peikoff. New York: Meridian. ——. 1970. Kant versus Sullivan. In Philosophy: Who Needs It. 1982. New York: Signet. Spinoza, B. 1675. Ethics. E. Curley, translator. 1985. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tad, I think a little closer to the misquote is Rand's thought that the main purpose of art is not to identify existents or to educate (nor to urge moral reforms), but to set up an interesting experience. Art most excellent, additionally gives an interesting experience not simply of how things are, but of how they could and ought to be; and it inspires one in the effort to reach one's distant goals.

Hamas Network of Tunnels Under Gaza

Why would they attack Syria (Assad)?

Previously: Part 2 – Aristotle PS – In Parts of Animals Aristotle develops explanatory resources he thinks required for a successful study of animals and animal life. He argues for the explanatory priority of final/formal causes over efficient/material causes. In the natural science of animals, in Aristotle’s view, the starting point of the science should be that entity which is to be, by the activities: the mature healthy animal. That end is the governing cause in animal life, and it is the source of the necessity in the sequential formation and the operation of the parts of the animal, unlike necessity in geometry or in mathematical astronomy (PA 639b12–640a6; Meta. 996a29–31; Phys. 200a15–23). Further: Gotthelf 2012, 155-58; Lennox 2021, 83–85, 88, 138, 162–68, 273; and Leunissen 2010, 81–89, 155–75. Aristotle c.348–322 B.C.E. Parts of Animals. W. Ogle, translator. In Barnes 1984. ——. Aristotle Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2016. Indianapolis: Hackett. ——. Aristotle Physics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2018. Indianapolis: Hackett. Barnes, J. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gotthelf, A. 2012. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. New York: Oxford University Press. Lennox, J.G. 2021. Aristotle on Inquiry – Erotetic Frameworks and Domain-Specific Norms. New York: Cambridge University Press. Leunissen, M. 2010. Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press.

(This post steps out for a moment from the metaphysics and epistemology strands of this thread.) In her ATLAS SHRUGGED, Ayn Rand introduced the momentous insight that value is only in the context of life and its character. In her “Objectivist Ethics,” she added support to this idea by introducing comparison of a living thing with an indestructible robot, which I take to be not a living thing but a machine moving about and manipulating things. A machine that is absolutely indestructible and operational forever would be contrary the second law of thermodynamics, so such a machine is impossible. However, for the sake of the thought experiment, I don’t think that matters, for such a machine is imaginable as a limiting device just as we imagine a perfect engine or perfect refrigerator in thermodynamics. I want to note the particular way Leonard Peikoff articulates in OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND the profound difference between such a robot and a living thing, which is in support of the idea that value is from the phenomenon that is life. And I want to compare a particular in Peikoff’s discussion with the use Aristotle makes of that same particular, a string leading to an important difference between Rand and Aristotle on the foundation of value. Peikoff writes: “Living organisms are the entities that make ‘value’ possible. They are the entities capable of self-generated, goal-directed action—because they are the conditional entities, which face the alternative of life or death.They are thus the only kind of entities that can (and must) pursue values” (209). Concerning Rand’s elaboration by comparison with an indestructible robot, “such a robot, not facing the alternative of life or death, requires no action to sustain itself.” An engineer head like mine would incline to soften that robot with certain features: We could well suppose it requires actions to maintain itself in operation, such as maintaining its ability to receive energy to power its actions and lubrication to keep its ability for locomotion. Still, the need to continue its operations would not be a need sourced in its own non-living operations, but in the living operations of the humans for which it is an instrument. Peikoff thinks of the robot as not needing any nutritive action, since it is conceived as everlasting. And it is from absence of nutritive need that Peikoff notes the robot, non-living and forever operational, would not need teeth. Aristotle observed that toothed animals use teeth for protection against other animals and for getting food and preparing it for nutrition. I observe that although the robot would not need teeth, it could need always-winning features for defense of its continuing operations and it could need always effectively maintained features for endlessly receiving energy for its operations. But again, such features needed for continued operations (are contrary thermo, but more importantly) are not ultimately sourced in needs of the robot, but in needs sourced in the constitution of human beings as living entities. The profound difference between non-living robot and living entity capable of values remains. Among toothed animals, Aristotle observes functions served by teeth and the detail that the forward teeth will be shaped for the function of cutting, the back teeth for grinding, and all made of a hard material in order to be effective in those tasks. These characteristics of teeth are regularly recurring animal to animal, and Aristotle sees such suitedness to preserving animal life to indicate that the final cause Animal Life is the cause of there being these animal instruments Teeth occurring with the characteristics they have. We can go along with that way of thinking if we cash it in terms of our modern biology, such as is done by Harry Binswanger in THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF TELEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS. The great difference between Rand and Aristotle in this vicinity is that for Rand, the needs-buck or function-buck or value-buck stops right here with the fact of life and its character. Life in Rand’s vista (and I agree) is the only end-in-itself, and life is the ultimate source and ultimate point of any other sort of ends in the cosmos. Life is the house and source and end of all goodness. For Aristotle, the perfectly effortless, perfectly circular motion of the outermost celestial sphere bearing the fixed stars across the sky is the paragon of goodness to which the cyclic patterns of life loosely approximate and in which life participates. Goodness for Aristotle, it seems, is the house and end for life, backwards to Rand.

A paper concerning Ayn Rand's political philosophy will be presented in a session on the theme of Radical Liberalism at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophy Association in January 2024 in New York. The paper is titled "Ayn Rand's Novel Contribution: Aristotelian Liberalism." The author of this paper is Cory Massimino

To Have and Have Not

Chicago Street Crime of Late The Mayor I don't know what will be effective against these continuing violent violations of individual rights, but I don't think any of the usual remedies proposed by Left or Right are going to be effective. I wonder if Chicago Police needs more help from the FBI.

Kuhn's Intellectual Path <– a review by Howard Sankley of this book by K. Brad Wray (My copy of that book of Wray's arrives tomorrow.) Of related interest (which I have already): The Essential Tension by Thomas Kuhn The Road Since Structure edited by Conant and Haugeland Reconsidering Logical Positivism by Michael Friedman The Cambridge Companion to Carnap edited by Friedman and Creath Scientific Revolutions edited by Ian Hacking Interpreting Kuhn edited by Brad Wray The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Anderson, Barker, and Chen

Gravitational Effect on Motion of Anti-Matter Observed

I’ll add a couple of Notes and the References. Notes [1] Attribution of this conception of a Prime Matter to Aristotle goes as far back as Augustine and Simplicius, similarly was it adopted by Avicenna and continued and cemented by Aquinas, and it is predominate among Aristotle scholars to the present. A minority view takes Aristotle as not holding to a bare-substrate (Prime Matter) theory of substantial change, but a compresent-properties view without substrate (Lewis 2009, 180). [2] James Lennox argues that Aristotle on balance is best seen as including matter as well as form in the definitional accounting of the matter/form composite that is natural body (Lennox 2015, 18; 2021, 137–39; cf. Jetton 1991, 5, here). References Anagnostopoulos, G., editor, 2009. A Companion to Aristotle. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Aristotle c.348–322. B.C.E. Physics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2018. Indianapolis: Hackett. ——. Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2016. Indianapolis: Hackett. Jetton, M. 1991. Philosophy of Mathematics. Objectivity 1(2):1–32. Lennox, J.G. 2015. How to Study Natural Bodies. In Leunissen 2015. —. 2021. Aristotle on Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leunissen, M., editor, 2015. Aristotle’s Physics – A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, F.A. 2009. Form and Matter. In Anagnostopoulos 2009. Rand, A. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House. ——. 1966–67. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. In Rand 1990. ——. 1969–71. Rand’s Epistemology Seminar. In Rand 1990. ——. 1990. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd ed. H. Binswanger and L. Peikoff, editors. New York: Meridian.

Further Comparison of Their Metaphysics Ayn Rand introduces her principle of identity and its exclusionary character with examples of physical entities being themselves not each other and examples of physical entities capable of contrary traits at different times, but not at the same time: “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” (1957, 1016). From the pervasiveness of such exclusionary identities in any existents, Rand proposed them as basis for non-contradiction being a pervasive right rule for us in identifying things. And she proposed the fact of exclusionary identities in all alterations as basis for the causal, lawful character of all alterations. ”The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action” (1037). Aristotle would continue: A leaf changing from not frozen to frozen requires a leaf continuing to be a leaf across the alteration. Likewise a frozen leaf undergoing changes from being a frozen leaf to being a burning leaf has a leaf continuing to be a leaf across those alterations. When it comes to a leaf becoming ashes or a leaf becoming the impression of a leaf in sedimentary stone, there is no continuing leaf. There must be rather a stuff shared by both a leaf and its ashes or its stone impression. There must be a stuff undergoing alteration from leaf to ashes or stone. Let us have that stuff the same in all such alterations of one kind of thing into another, let us call such a stuff Prime Matter. A leaf may consist of veins and webbing, a man of bones and flesh, but both leaf and man ultimately consist of Prime Matter. By this postulation, we can avoid the absurdity that materials can come from nothing or pass into nothing (Phys. 191a23–b17). In Rand’s time and ours, we have no live use for such a conception as Prime Matter. In its place, we have a conserved mass-energy, in its particular exemplifications, across alterations of one kind of thing into another. Rand would have gotten education in principles of conservation in chemistry and the conservation of energy from physics of the nineteenth century. With those in hand, there is no need to worry that any physical transformations are taking elementary matter into nothing or taking elementary matter as arising from nothing. Change of a leaf to ashes is a change from one kind of thing to a profoundly different kind of thing. As Aristotle casts it, that is a change from one substance to another substance. Call such change “substantial change.” In the transformation of leaf to ashes, Prime Matter has changed from one form to another. Call such forms of Prime Matter: Substantial Forms. All natural things are a composite of Prime Matter and Substantial Form on this view (as well as other levels of composite matter and form). Mattered form is what a natural thing is, which form real definition aims to capture in the essence of what a thing is. Definition capturing what a thing is essentially, in Aristotle’s account, is capture of the metaphysical essence of a thing, which is a thing’s form. “By form I mean the essence of each thing and the {its} primary substance” (Metaph. 1032b1–2). Rand rejected such a notion of metaphysical essence and form to be captured in real definitions. Rather, she took essential characteristics to be specified in real definitions as the most fundamental distinguishing real characteristics of a thing at a given stage of our knowledge. The implication of Rand’s metaphysics and epistemology is that identities in the world one has comprehended are not metaphysical unions of Prime Matter and Substantial Form (cf. Rand 1969–71, 286). Although Rand’s essential characteristic(s) in real definitions are explanatorily fundamental and sometimes that can be causally so, characteristics causally fundamental in relation to other characteristics of a thing are not causal as essences (Rand 1966–67, 52). Among the types of causes according to Aristotle are ones called material and ones called formal. We do not use the concept cause so broadly today. We say that an electric current in a wire causes a magnetic field around the wire (that is an instance of efficient causality), but we do not say that the constitutive elements of an electric current in wire, such as free electrons in the copper wire are a “cause” of the electric current. We say that electrical potential difference between the ends of the wire cause (an efficient cause) free electrons to move and such movement is an electric current. Contrary my remarks* in Part 1 of my essay review of The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts in which I obliquely endorsed a notion of material causes in nature, I say here and Objectivism should say: there are no material or formal causes in Aristotle’s sense for them for natural philosophy. Insofar as such causes are metaphysical dynamics underlying physical dynamics, they should be rejected, as dynamical metaphysics should be rejected. Insofar as material or formal causes in Aristotle’s sense are passive constituents of things or potentials of actuals, these too should be rejected as causes. References Aristotle c.348–322. B.C. Physics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2018. Indianapolis: Hackett. ——. Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2016. Indianapolis: Hackett. Rand, A. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House. ——. 1966–67. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. In Rand 1990. ——. 1969–71. Rand’s Epistemology Seminar. In Rand 1990. ——. 1990. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd ed. H. Binswanger and L. Peikoff, editors. New York: Meridian.

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