Knowledge

[discussion-image]

Hello, everyone. This will be my first post on the forum. If you want to know more about me you can look at my profile. While reading the first essay in "The Virtue of Selfishness," I often wondered about Rand's epistemology. Basically, I'm wondering if someone could explain to me how we acquire knowledge and what is the nature of knowledge? I'm wondering how it is that knowledge is objective, for example.

[Dante]

Welcome to the forum. Rand actually wrote her most extensive and explicitly philosophical stuff on the subject of epistemology, in the form of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I would highly recommend a very careful reading of that to gain an understanding of how Rand thought we gain knowledge and conceptualize it properly.

There is also a more accessible reference that you can view free online that does a good and faithful overview of the Objectivist viewpoint on the nature and features of knowledge. It doesn't go in-depth into Rand's concept-formation methodology (subjects like measurement omission, for example), but it lays out the proposed nature of knowledge and the support for that nature. It's called The Logical Structure of Objectivism. The relevant chapters are the Introduction and Chapter 1. The discussion of knowledge begins on page 7 of the Introduction and continues through the entire first chapter, entitled 'Knowledge.'

[LovesLife]

Basically, I'm wondering if someone could explain to me how we acquire knowledge and what is the nature of knowledge? I'm wondering how it is that knowledge is objective, for example.

We acquire knowledge either through observation (perception) or by applying reason to observations.

Knowledge is objective when the associated observations are anchored in objective reality. This contrasts with subjective or arbitrary "knowledge," which is where you just make something up and then start applying "reason" to that.