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Boydstun

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Objectivist Theory of Truth

In Altas Rand wrote: “An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge” (1016).

She continued, “to arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking.” She had already stated “a contradiction cannot exist,” which we may take to mean there are no contradictions in existence, that they do not obtain in reality. That fits with a correspondence view of truth,* but maybe with others as well (Schmitt 1995; Newman 2002; Armstrong 2004; Walker 1989; Thagard 2007).

In the next paragraph, Rand wrote: “Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.” This sounds something like correspondence, but more. By her insistence on integration, wholly rational integration, she seems be fashioning herself a determined variation on the correspondence theory of truth.

A recognition is an identification, and it looks highly likely that Rand took truth to be an identification as of ’57. She fills in that point expressly when she addresses truth again in ’66–’67. The following is her statement, which Merlin Jetton examined in Part 3 of his “Theories of Truth” (1993, 96–99).

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)

Jetton points out that concepts and universals have a couple of correspondence characters in Rand’s view of them.

Concepts, and universals, have a correspondence character: one concept corresponding to some number of particulars. Concepts “represent classification of observed existents according to their relationships to other observed existents” (ITOE 47). . . . That is a second correspondence character of concepts: their conformity with the relationships among existents. (TT 96–97)
Moreover, in Rand’s view,
Valid definitions reflect logical, hierarchical interdependencies among our concepts. Definitions must identify essentials in order to be true. Definitions, in Rand’s view, can be true in reality, true in a correspondence way. What is an essential characteristic, though it depends upon the context of one’s knowledge, is an issue of fact. (TT 97)

Jetton argues that Rand’s epistemological views and her metaphysical views “purport some version of the correspondence theory of truth.” He notes that both David Kelley (1986, 28) and Leonard Peikoff (1991, 165) classified Rand’s conception of truth as “in essence” the traditional correspondence conception. Fred Seddon notes that Rand understood her concept of truth as recogniton of reality to be a correspondence theory of truth (Seddon 2006, 42–43; Rand 1974, 14).

Jetton goes on to argue, however, that Rand’s emphasis on non-contradictory integration, as well as her metaphysics, gives her conception some of the character of the coherence theory of truth.* He quotes a passage from Peikoff (OPAR 123, which is straight Atlas and ITOE) and remarks “the similarity to coherentists like Bradley and Blanshard is clear” (98).

Brand Blanshard’s book Reason and Analysis appeared in 1962. It was reviewed favorably by Nathaniel Branden the following year. Branden understood that Blanshard was some sort of absolute idealist, but the book offered access to contemporary positivist and analytic philosophy (including the A-S distinction*), and it offered criticisms of them, which Objectivists might join.

Notice the similarity of Rand’s view, as stated by Nathaniel Branden in the Basic Principles of Objectivism lectures (c. 1968), to that of coherence theorists. In Rand’s view, he says:

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 writes “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the ideas’ truth” (OPAR 171). Of that statement, Jetton writes:

This is another appeal to coherence (and a bar to skepticism of the deceitful-genie sort). . . . [it] seems in effect to say that coherence establishes truth (a far stronger claim than the that coherence is a sign, or criterion of truth. Perhaps by “establish” Peikoff means only verify or confirm, rather than constitute. (TT 99)

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 that the number of oval-head #4 five-eighths-inch brass screws I have remaining in the 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. 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. In his contribution* to Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue, Irfan Khawaja also takes issue with Peikoff’s bold assertion that objectivity as epistemic justification is sufficient for truth. Khawaja gives a quick insightful objection, which I think is incorrect (2011, 64).

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. (A good study might be to contrast and compare the Objectivist view with the very local sufficiency condition of Descartes: When we have clearly and distinctly understood a proposition, we can infallibly assign a truth value to it. Then too, an interesting comparison on this point could be made between Objectivism and Stoicism [see Potts 1996, 12–13, 37–39]* and Peikoff 2012, 48.)

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 (so far with go-ahead) 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.

It has seemed to me for some decades, however, that the history of science as we come to Galileo and Descartes showed that sometimes one’s experience leads one to an extremely well justified proposition in which it would have been very hard to realize that one was overstepping the evidence and that the proposition should not have been taken as certain knowledge, only as likely knowledge. Such would be the old, mistaken propositions that every moving body requires a mover* and that heavier bodies fall faster. This is a danger zone (this-worldly and rational) for the precept “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the idea’s truth.”

In the contexts of ancient or medieval knowledge, one could have checked the idea that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones by doing Galileo’s thought experiment. Their integrations and checking for contradictions of the idea was not complete, not perfect, even within their own contexts of knowledge. Granted these cases are unusual, nevertheless, this danger zone is there. The earlier men could have made the reasoning check made by Galileo: In imagination drop two identical bricks, of identical weight, from the same height. You know they must reach the ground at the same time. Now consider the two bricks joined, making a combined brick weighing twice as much as the two individuals. Drop that joined brick from the same height as before. The time of fall cannot be different than when the halves were individuals falling side by side. Therefore, bodies of different weights fall at the same rate. (And observations in contradiction with that result must have specific causes of their nonconformity, which need to be found.) The earlier men’s checking was incomplete without this creative check, and one would have had no inkling of that until the wise guy came along.

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 (cf.). 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” (OPAR 192).

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 (Metaph. 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).

I shall refer to the “coherence” strain in Rand’s theory of truth as the integration element in her correspondence theory of truth (cf. TT 2 114–17; 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 (TT 2, 114).

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" (Top. 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.

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.

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.

Armstrong, D. 2004. Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge.

Berliner, M., editor, 2012. Understanding Objectivism, Leonard Peikoff’s Lectures. NAL.

Blanshard, B. 1962. Reason and Analysis. Open Court.

Branden, N. 2009. The Vision of Ayn Rand. Cobden.

Hospers, J. 1953. An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. Prentice-Hall.

Jetton, M. 1992–93. Theories of Truth. Objectivity 1(4):1–30, 1(5):109–49, 1(6):73–106.

Khawaja, I. The Foundations of Ethics – Objectivism and Analytic Philosophy. In Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue. A. Gotthelf and J. Lennox, editors. Pittsburgh.

Kelley, D. 1986. The Evidence of the Senses. LSU.

Mayhew, R. 1995. Ayn Rand’s Marginalia. ARI.

Newman, A. 2002. The Correspondence Theory of Truth. Cambridge.

Peikoff, L. 1991. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dutton.

——. 1992. The Art of Thinking. Lectures.

——. 2012. The DIM Hypothesis. NAL.

Potts, D. 1996. Rationalism, Skepticism, and Anti-Rationalism in Greek Philosophy after Aristotle. Objectivity 2(4):1–76.

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.

——. 1974. Philosophical Detection. In Philosophy: Who Needs It. 1982. Signet.

Schmitt, F. 1995. Truth: A Primer. Westview.

Seddon, F. 2006. Rand and Rescher on Truth. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8(1):41–48.

Thagard, P. 2007. Coherence, Truth, and the Development of Scientific Knowledge. Philosophy of Science 74(1):28–47.

Walker, R. 1989. The Coherence Theory of Truth. Routledge.

Witt, C. 1989. Substance and Essence in Aristotle. Cornell.

In preparing this paper, I have benefited from discussions at Objectivist Living.

I hope to write another paper for this thread, which will be on the nature of truth in geometry.

Edited by Boydstun
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It is important to restrain the notion of the correspondence found in the 'correspondence theory of truth' with the identity of a knowing subject, and particularly the finiteness of man's ability to sense, perceive, and know.

Not being omniscient cannot be counted as an error or a failure of correspondence. Correspondence must be between a particular mind and the particular portion of existence presented to that mind up until a particular moment. It is entirely possible for a 'methodologically conscious adult' to be logically compelled to accept a certain conclusion as true which a different 'methodologically conscious adult' with a different exposure to other elements of existence would reject (or even perhaps the same adult at a later time and broader context).

Peikoff boldly states: “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the ideas’ truth.”

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.

This objection implicitly relies on a premise that what is true must be true for all time, for all contexts, perhaps eternally. Instead, consider the alternate premise that because knowers are finite then truth is finite, and is bound to particulars and is constituted of particulars. Correspondence is correspondence between particulars, not correspondence between one knowing agent and the universe as a timeless whole.

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. Correspondence is correspondence between particulars, not correspondence between one knowing agent and the universe as a timeless whole.

Its not clear to me what differentiation your making here. Could you give an example of what "correspondence between particulars" is as opposed to a knower and a timeless whole/universe please.

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Its not clear to me what differentiation your making here. Could you give an example of what "correspondence between particulars" is as opposed to a knower and a timeless whole/universe please.

A particular person (finite) knows a particular context (finite), as opposed to a particular person (finite) knowing the whole Universe as God would know it (infinite, by omniscience meaning knowing all at once so there could never be an expanded context problem and with infallibility in performing all possible integrations at once instead of over time, serially).

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Hi Budd,

On the factor of context, we agree.

When you say that essence is epistemological, not metaphysical, I imagine you are concurring with Rand when she wrote: “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” (ibid.) 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 (Topics 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.

These considerations overlapping and supplementing the text of my essay support the view stated therein that in Rand’s theory of definition (and in mine): “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.”

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"Boydstun said:

"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."

Are you maintaining here that there are non-entity dependent existents? I find your style of writing slightly difficult to follow;) (edit: I ask because of your statement on "space"and on "relationships" even though your previous statement of ontological primacy.)

Edit:

" 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."

I submit to you that a proper understanding of "energy" is likewise a dynamic relational concept that is entity dependent. That is, there is no justification for treating energy as a causal substance.

Edited by Plasmatic
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I submit to you that a proper understanding of "energy" is likewise a dynamic relational concept that is entity dependent. That is, there is no justification for treating energy as a causal substance.

An attribute can be a causal factor and need not be regarded as a substance.

You disagreement is noted, but I suggest we leave that entire topic for other threads.

Edited by Grames
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Energy is not an attribute it's a description of interactional effects of entities upon one another. It is relevant in that it is a misapplication of the premise that entities are primary.(edit and the proper reductive context the concept was formed in originally) That said it is a good topic to have it's own thread.

Edited by Plasmatic
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. . .
Not being omniscient cannot be counted as an error or a failure of correspondence. Correspondence must be between a particular mind and the particular portion of existence presented to that mind up until a particular moment. . . .


Hi Grames,

I would say not being omniscient is only not knowing certain things. Any unknown thing can come to be known. Any unknown thing stands in definite unknown relations to things presently known. The mind not knowing a thing and its relations to things it knows can bring any such unknown thing and relations into its knowledge. The mind stands in a relation of potential integrated correspondence to anything presently unknown to it.

Rand speaks in her epistemology of what is known to man at a given stage of human advance. It is not that any individual has all that knowledge at a given stage, but every fact some mind has grasped can come into the grasp of minds in the dark. What I will learn from others or directly from the world and my reasoning tomorrow stands today in a relation of potential integrated correspondence to my knowing mind today.

. . .

It is entirely possible for a 'methodologically conscious adult' to be logically compelled to accept a certain conclusion as true which a different 'methodologically conscious adult' with a different exposure to other elements of existence would reject (or even perhaps the same adult at a later time and broader context). 
. . .


The truth accepted by one of those minds you speak of and rejected by the other would not be a truth accepted with fully justified full certainty by the one and rejected with fully justifiable full certainty by the other. This way of looking at it seems consonant with Rand’s views. And it seems correct to me.

To say that one was powerfully justified and perfectly reasonable in taking such-and-such for certainly true is not quite the same as saying one was fully justified in taking such-and-such for certainly true. There will be economy of time to factor into pursuit of assessing how highly certain one should be about something one is rationally accepting for true, for there will be competing fronts for getting on with the world. That sometimes rational thinkers 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.

(I'll get on now with the essay on truth in geometry.)

Edited by Boydstun
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Boydstun,

You are missing a fundamental point of Objectivism, and it's one that I failed to grasp for many, many years.

"....the essential characteristic of items under a concept should be additionally a fundamental one,..."

There is no fundamental characteristic which has any more weight, value or meaning than any other characteristic -- except in an explicit context, and then only for that context. Your use of the word "under" is very telling. There is no "under" when it comes to concepts.

"
The truth accepted by one of those minds you speak of and rejected by the other would not be a truth accepted with fully justified full certainty by the one and rejected with fully justifiable full certainty by the other....."

You are looking at this from a "third-person" perspective -- not the first-person perspective of the people who are doing the actual thinking. This was the point of Grames' reply above. And by the way, we ONLY possess a first-person perspective. Each and everyone of us. You cannot know what you don't know.

"To say that one was powerfully justified and perfectly reasonable in taking such-and-such for certainly true is not quite the same as saying one was fully justified in taking such-and-such for certainly true. There will be economy of time to factor into pursuit of assessing how highly certain one should be...."

More "third-person" perspective.

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The truth accepted by one of those minds you speak of and rejected by the other would not be a truth accepted with fully justified full certainty by the one and rejected with fully justifiable full certainty by the other. This way of looking at it seems consonant with Rand’s views. And it seems correct to me.

Hi Boydstun,

Even at the level of making perceptual judgements and identifying objects as instances of first level concepts it is possible to make justified error. The possibility of justified error must carry through to higher level concepts as well.

The case for this is laid in Dr. Kelley's the Evidence of the Senses. He identifes three principles of justified perceptual judgement in chapter 7:

  1. For a judgment to be justified by perception, the person judging must perceptually discriminate the object he takes to be an instance of the concept predicated.

  2. One must perceive the object in a form which is normal for the perception of F objects (F a concept of a sensory quality).

  3. One must take into account any evidence one has that the conditions of perception are abnormal.

Definition of Normal Condition- any condition of perception within a range that allows discrimination of the similarity to other objects subsumed by the same concept.

The conceptual override - Using background knowledge of what F looks like in abnormal conditions to make a judgment makes that judgment an inference (as opposed to a recognition, see the rest of ch. 7 - Grames).

Justified error - An object which is Not-F may be perceived in the form and normal conditions for the perception of F. One can be perceptually justified in judging a Not-F is F.

In my Notes I go on to paraphrase what he says about justification:

Two concepts of justification:

• "Being in a position to know" is what justifies - meaning in contact with reality. Knowledge is the
correct
identification of things as they are independently of our beliefs. By this theory an hallucinator is not in a position to know what he asserts, and neither is the subject of an illusion.

• "Reasonableness" What justifies is what makes it reasonable to think so. Justification is normative, a standard of what ought to be cognitive conduct. But "ought implies can", a person cannot be held accountable to a standard impossible to apply in a given case. By this theory the subject of an illusion is reasonable in forming the judgment to which his experience prompts him, and so is the hallucinator.

Holding to either theory of justification in disregard of the other is another manifestation of issues discussed in Chapter 1. The first theory disregards the process of knowing {intrinsicism}, the second theory discards reality as the standard {subjectivism}. Objectively, a percept, even an illusory percept, arises from the interaction of object, senses and conditions. A subject takes an object to be F on the basis of similarities that are the real product of perceptual contact with reality. Hallucinations can be reasonably interpreted in certain ways, but there can be no perceptual justification without perceptual contact with reality. The subject of an illusion can be justified, an hallucinator cannot.

My objection here is the position you take seems fairly characterized as "what justifies is being in a position to know" exclusively.

It is not clear to me what Rand's views would be at this level technical and academic treatment, but Kelley is informed by Rand's philosophy and may have literally informed Rand of his thoughts during the writing of his thesis and had opportunity for feedback. It is at least consistent with Rand, not contradictory.

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Grames,

One can err about the level of one’s justification for thinking something true. When I come to understand that something I thought I was justified in thinking true is actually false, I may find that the extent to which I had earlier thought myself justified was in error. Then again, a less than full confidence with which I held the earlier truth may have matched the level of justification I had. I’m inclined to think that in all cases for which I had been fully confident, yet the belief later proves false, I was in error about the level of justification I had for the belief.

People have some “intuitive” ideas about mechanics that are mistaken. When shown by the gedanken of Galileo that one’s intuitive belief that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones is false, one might find that one’s justification for the false belief had really been rather thin, indeed that one had very little justification for that false belief.

There is one strong indicator that from sunrise to sunset the sun moves: we see it moving. When we learn that and how this can be explained by rotation of the earth, we understand that a distinction needs to be drawn between motions and kinematical perspectives of the motions from one of the involved bodies. Our earlier conviction that the sun moves was in fact ambiguous.

For much knowledge, I incline to think we need to leave open the possibility that it is ambiguous and can become ever more exact with the growth of knowledge. The possibility that some knowledge is presently ambiguous seems, however, to be an inert possibility where much evidence has been thoroughly integrated for present knowledge. I don’t think we would be justified in withholding acceptance for true an integrated, logically processed idea based on an entirely unspecific possibility of ambiguity. There seems to be a rational threshold, beyond which acceptance for true should not be resisted on account of such a possibility. Also, the ambiguous belief is not going to become entirely untrue when disambiguated.

I wonder if there are not just different degrees of certainty, but some different kinds of certainty. I’ll have to think about that and think about it in connection with establish in “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the idea’s truth.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Plas, I wanted to let you know that David Kelley’s The Evidence of the Senses has recently been made available online here.

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Ok, so just in case anyone was mislead by the choice of words "perceptual judgment", Kelly says this:

Between the percept and inferential knowledge lies the perceptual judgment,

the conceptual identification of what is directly perceived-e.g., "This is a

table."the acquisition of the concept involved ("table") depends on the awareness of

patterns of similarity among objects. Hence the perceptual judgmentis not a form of direct awareness; the entire conceptual level is indirect.

TEOTS pg 155 on digital copy

Edited by Plasmatic
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One can err about the level of one’s justification for thinking something true.

This seems a noncontroversial statement. But what does your concept of error refer to?

In Peikoff's Art of Thinking lecture on certainty he considers the problem of making statements about the future. For the example of deciding to fly a particular plane or not, when all of the known conditions for a safe flight have been checked against this particular plane successfully then it can be concluded with certainty that the flight of the plane will be safe. But then the plane is hit by a meteor in mid air and crashes. Was the person concluding that the plane was safe to fly wrong? Peikoff answers emphatically no, because there was no fallacy, no lapse of logic, no misinterpretation of available data. Epistemological certainty is the result of adhering to the proper method of thought.

Peikoff frames the question as if 'you' were the person deciding to fly or not, and question at the end is whether or not 'you' were wrong. It is a different question to ask "was the conclusion that the plane was safe to fly wrong?" because it abstracts the conclusion from the person doing the concluding, which introduces ambiguity of context. Any reader of the question about the conclusion will answer the from the third person perspective in hindsight, but a reader of the question about the person deciding whether or not to fly is invited to consider the second person perspective without hindsight (and in 'you' form the scenario is in first person perspective).

As we live our lives moment to moment in first person perspective, the question about the person is more philosophically relevant than the question about the conclusion. Its all about being methodical.

The Objectivist view on the possibility of moral perfection is much the same. Rand writes on the virtue of pride: "Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality—not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute."

Peikoff amplifies in OPAR

Moral concepts, including "right," "good," and "perfect," are norms formulated to guide human choice. Such concepts can refer only to that which is within the power of choice. There is no excuse, therefore, for a man who resigns himself to flaws in his character. "Flaws" does not mean errors of knowledge, which involve no evasion; it means breaches of morality, which do involve evasion.(58) The moral man may lack a piece of knowledge or reach a mistaken conclusion; but he does not tolerate willful evil, neither in his consciousness nor in his action, neither in the form of sins of commission nor of sins of omission. He does not demand of himself the impossible, but he does demand every ounce of the possible.

Pride and certainty are related, and similar in that both are the result of willful adherence to the proper method of thought and conduct. Failing to know what it is not possible to have known in a knower's context is neither an epistemological error nor a moral failure.

There is one strong indicator that from sunrise to sunset the sun moves: we see it moving. When we learn that and how this can be explained by rotation of the earth, we understand that a distinction needs to be drawn between motions and kinematical perspectives of the motions from one of the involved bodies. Our earlier conviction that the sun moves was in fact ambiguous.

It was self-evidently true for pre-historic, pre-mathematical, pre-telescope man that the sun moves across the sky and it is still true today. What is justified by observation is the sun moving across the sky, not the ambiguous "the sun moves". Ambiguity was caused by dropping context in the form of dropping a phrase.

For much knowledge, I incline to think we need to leave open the possibility that it is ambiguous and can become ever more exact with the growth of knowledge.

All knowledge is subject to expansion, every last bit of it with the sole exception of statements of axioms, which must hold for all possible contexts of knowledge. It is impossible in principle to know when everything is known about a topic because that would require omniscience and man is not omniscient either individually or in the sense of the collective knowledge of mankind. The problem of ambiguity is simply not being aware of the need to limit claims to knowledge to the context in which they are derived and justified.

I wonder if there are not just different degrees of certainty, but some different kinds of certainty. I’ll have to think about that and think about it in connection with establish in “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the idea’s truth.”

Peikoff would deny there are either degrees or kinds of certainty or that certainty is even applicable to much knowledge. Some excerpts on certainty from my notes:

"Certainty is about knowledge from a certain perspective. I
t designates some complex items of knowledge. Not all complex items, and no simple items, considered in contrast to the complex transitional evidential states that precede them."

Some knowledge is simple: it has no "transitional evidentiary states" See a table, or do not. Recall your wife's face, or do not. No progress through possible and probable to certain. Certainty applies to higher level inductive reasoning.

Q: If certainty is a subcategory of knowledge what would be an example of knowledge that is uncertain?

LP: No, it is not the case that all knowledge is certain or uncertain. Complex inductive conclusions can be certain or uncertain, does not apply to other knowledge.

Q: Certain vs. fully certain.

LP No, any modifier of certain is a mistake.

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Hi, Stephen

You mentioned Jetton who argued, " that Rand’s emphasis on non-contradictory integration, as well as her metaphysics, gives her conception some of the character of the coherence theory of truth."

As far as I know a coherence theory of truth states that the truth of any (true) proposition consists in its coherence with some specified set of propositions which may or may not pertain to reality. Can you elaborate Jetton's position?

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Merlin Jetton’s essay “Theories of Truth” appeared in 1992–93 in Objectivity. The essay was published in three installments:

In V1N4 were the sections:

  • Ancient and Medieval

  • Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz

  • Spinoza and Kant

  • An Assessment of the Correspondence Theory

In V1N5 were the sections:

  • Hegel

  • Coherence Theory of Truth

  • Foundational Truths

  • Scientific Truths

In V1N6 were the sections:

  • Pragmatist Theories of Truth

  • The Linguistic Turn

  • Objectivism on Truth

  • A Combined Approach

About Objectivity

At the Objectivity Archive, the essay can be read by clicking on those particular Numbers of Volume 1. It takes a couple of minutes to load.

From the Subject Index, under Truth, we find that Jetton treats coherence on these pages:

V1N4 11–13, 15–17, 20–22, 24–25

V1N5 111–13, 114–29

V1N6 93, 99–104

Check the bolded pages first.

The bolded pages from V1N4 give the senses and roles of coherence for truth according to Locke and Leibniz. Pages 20–22 concern coherence elements in Spinoza’s view of truth. On pages 24–25, Jetton weighs quite heavily the coherence element in Kant.

Pages 111–13 of V1N5 show Hegel’s tendencies towards a coherence account of truth. However, it is with §VI, which is on pages 114–29, that Merlin gives us the coherence account of truth proper. “The coherence theory is taken to include the following four theses by most, if not all, of its defenders:

  1. Truth (usually applied to ideas or judgments) is defined as coherence within the orderly system that constitutes reality.

  2. The criterion, as well as the definition, of truth is coherence within the ordered system of reality.

  3. Relations are internal; that is, a thing’s relations with other things are essential to its being what it is; indeed, they may constitute what it is.

  4. Truth admits of degrees. . . . No idea except perhaps the idea of the whole (and therefore no idea that a human being could grasp) can be properly said to be wholly true.

“What more exactly does coherence in the coherence theory mean? It means consistency and connectedness. . .” (114–15). In the pages following, Jetton lays out the elaborations of the main coherence theorists, including Bradley, Joachim, and Blanshard. These coherence theorists do not suggest that truth consists in coherence among any arbitrary set of propositions (124). Blanshard writes that the coherence theory “does not hold that any and every system is true, no matter how abstract and limited; it holds that one system only is true, namely the system in which everything real and possible is included. How one can find in this the notion that a system would still give truth if, like some arbitrary geometry, it disregarded experience completely, it is not easy to see.” (quoted on 124–25).

Jetton displays aspects of Rand’s metaphysics and epistemology aligning with correspondence theory of truth as well as aspects aligning with coherence theory of truth in V1N6, pages 98–99.

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Thank you. If some versions of coherent theory pertain to the premises which pertain to reality, then such a theory is not much different from the correspondence theory. However this is not always the case. For example in the ethical theory of reflective equilibrium the coherence doesn't pertain to reality in any form but only to the set of beliefs. As Irfan Khawaja observed :

"coherence is a relation between beliefs, while knowledge is a relation between beliefs and a world that exists independently of beliefs. If so, the professed goal of the theory is irrelevant at best (and orthogonal at worst) to the goal of cognition, viz.,knowledge."

(Reason Papers Vol. 26 pg67).

Such a theory could be hardly compatible with Objectivism.

Edited by Leonid
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  • 1 month later...

Re: #19

I don’t see how there can be any truths certified as objective without combining one’s third-person perspective on them with one’s first-person perspective on them. Kant correctly observed that any assertion of P can be prefaced with I think. That is, if I assert P, that entails “I think P.” But conversely, I claim and hope you will agree, “I think such-and-such is the case” entails the straight assertion “Such and such is the case.” The frame of the knower in the latter is one of third-person (the same knower who also can take up the frame of first-person, to be sure), in which what is the case is acknowledged to be so independently of the knower. Cognizance of one’s ignorance beyond what one has grasped also requires not only one’s first-person perspective, but one’s third-person perspective, one including in view both the world and one’s trajectory of knowing.

Grames, in thinking about whether the way I have positioned a ladder will be safe for my use, it would seem I can go back and forth between first- and third-person perspective on the assessment. I’m not sure that that distinction is the one you are after. Ex ante and ex post are situations in which different information is available, but I wouldn’t identify one situation with the frame of first person and the other with third person.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What has proven to be the final version of “Objectivist Theory of Truth,”

which was improved somewhat by responses in this thread, resides here.

Edited by Boydstun
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