M

an lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea with a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols. When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions - rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic-mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not-sanely." ......Robert Heinlein.

A definition is a statement designed to "identify the specific meaning of a concept, isolate the facts of reality to which the concept refers and of which the concept is a mental integration." (Jan63 - 3)
It serves "to keep a concept distinct from all others, to keep it connected to a specific group of existents" (Jul67 - 9), or, as Harry Browne so aptly put it: "to draw a sharp line between what IS a certain thing and what isn't."
"The purpose of defining one's terms is to afford oneself the inestimable benefit of knowing what one is talking about." (Jan63 - 3)
(References are to various issues of THE OBJECTIVIST NEWSLETTER.)

If one does not scrupulously afford oneself this benefit, the facts of reality will, sooner or later, correct one's error.

Obviously, there are some mistaken definitions that will be corrected immediately as they are acted upon. If, for example, you define a hot stove as a chair, your mistake will be immediately and warmly chastised. There are other mistakes, however, that will not be so quickly righted. If you improperly identify an onion seed as a carrot seed, your mistake will not be corrected for weeks or even months. In the meantime you will have dug your garden, planted your seed, fertilized it, watered it, and carefully cultivated it until harvest time. Only then will you uncover your error, but by then you will have wasted a great deal of time and energy in the pursuit of an improper course of action, and you will then also be stuck with the consequences of your mistake: eating onions instead of carrots until next spring.

Some mistakes will take even longer to be rectified. The more abstract the concept, the less immediately will reality show you your error.

If you incorrectly define marriage, the tragic result may be a divorce court - but this "setting right" of the situation may not come about until after years of domestic suffering. If you mistakenly define the principles of business management, you will eventually find yourself in a bankruptcy court; but again, it may take decades of toil and effort before the facts of reality catch up with you. And finally, if a group of men establishing a new country mistakenly define the practice of freedom, two centuries later their grandchildren may wake up one morning to find themselves in a concentration camp.

Let thy words be keen heeders of truth, for truth is no heeder of words.

How to Make a Definition

Place the class of entity you wish to define in a wider class called a genus, all members of which share common characteristics. (e.g., Man is a living being.) Then add a qualification to the statement of inclusion which differentiates the class to be defined from all the other members of the wider class. (Man is a rational living being.)

For a precise and detailed account of the cognitive process involved, see Ayn Rand's INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY. I recommend also David Kelley's THE ART OF REASONING for further explanation.

There are several corollary rules for carrying out this procedure:

• Rule of Equivalence: A definition must be true of every member of the class being defined and only of members of that class.
• Rule of Fundamentality: A definition must refer to the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the thing being defined (else you will be committing the fallacy of "definition by non-essentials"). The definitive characteristic must be that which is a cause, not an effect: that which makes a thing what it is and differentiates it from all other things - that without which it would not be the kind of thing which it is.
• Rule of Non-Circularity: A definition must not contain any concept which, to be understood, presupposes the definition. An example of circularity is: "Democracy is a system of government which uses democratic procedures."
• Rule of Non-Negativity: A definition must tell what the thing IS rather than what it is NOT. Exceptions are those concepts which are inherently negative in meaning, such as orphan or bachelor. But note that a positive concept is always presupposed by such negative terms.
• Rule of Context: All known distinguishing aspects must be considered. The definition must account for all presently held knowledge.
• Rule of Clarity: A definition must not be obscure, metaphorical or poetic but must clearly state a literal and exact meaning. For example: "Truth is beauty" is a lovely poetic statement, but it is NOT a definition.

A false definition of Rational Selfishness is that everything everyone does every moment throughout life is selfish. All this does is define "selfishness" in a way that is not helpful at all, because it makes "selfishness" all-inclusive. A word is a tool for delimiting one area of thought from others. The word becomes useless if it is defined to include everything. The word "everything" already serves that purpose quite well; we don't need a synonym.

Ostensive definitions are those which establish directly, by an appeal to experience, the relationship between a word and that to which it refers. Ostensive definitions define primaries which cannot be placed into a genus and differentiated. Examples are sensory primaries like color, roughness, bitterness, and warmth; or metaphysical primaries such as Existence. One cannot place Existence into a wider class of entities.

One of the worst consequences of faulty definitions is that you will be confused every time you have to compare and relate concepts. If you haven't conceptualized according to fundamentals, but instead by some superficial characteristics, then when you need to compare your concepts, for the purpose of making moral or ethical judgments, you'll be in real trouble.

A definition must distinguish between essences and labels. The essences of entities are not arbitrary, as are the verbal labels by which we symbolize the entities. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet - because giving the rose another name would not make it another entity. A definition is not an arbitrary construct, but the identification of a natural phenomenon. For example: we cannot arbitrarily define "gravity". It is a phenomenon that we must discover. Once we understand it we can then define the WORD "gravity" based on the discovery. Defining a term is not a matter of defining it for MYself or for YOURself, but of making an identification that leads to a truthful UNDERSTANDING of the phenomenon that has been defined.

Concept Reduction (from Leonard Peikoff)

The existence of a cognitive hierarchy does not preclude the existence of cognitive options. For example: "organism" is a higher-level concept, which one can reach only after one has conceptualized in appropriate stages a wide variety of its instances. But there is no reason why one must reach it through "cat," "dog," "rosebush," rather than, say, through "horse," "bird," "orange tree." Similarly, a man could not discover the law of gravitation without extensive study and conceptualization of more elementary facts about motion; but nothing in epistemology requires that the culminating insight flow from the fall of an apple, as against many other possibilities. A higher-level item is dependent on the grasp of an appropriate series of earlier items; but that series is not necessarily unique in content.

The concept of "hierarchy" applies whenever a given cognitive level cannot be reached or understood without a certain kind of prerequisite. A hierarchy is a type of context in which the simpler data make the more complex data possible.

The epistemological responsibility imposed on man by the fact that knowledge is contextual is the need of integration. The responsibility imposed by the fact that knowledge is hierarchical is the need of reduction.

In fact, men can try to move to higher levels of cognition without properly understanding the intermediate material. They can do so through many causes, such as impatience, anti-effort, or simple error. By far the most important cause, however, is the fact that many men are content to use the concepts and conclusions of other men without understanding the steps that led to them. Such men attempt to deal with higher levels of a complex structure without having established the requisite base. As a result, their mental activity consists in building confusion on confusion, instead of knowledge on knowledge. In such a mind, the chain relating higher-level content to perceptual reality is broken; the individual's conceptual structure floats in the air, detached from facts and from cognition.

Context-keeping is indispensable if men are to keep their ideas connected to reality. This is where the process of reduction becomes necessary.

Reduction is the means of connecting an advanced concept to reality by traveling backwards through the hierarchical structure involved in its formation. Reduction is the process of starting with a higher-level cognitive item and identifying in logical sequence the intermediate steps that relate it to perceptual data. Since there are often options in the detail of a learning process, one need not necessarily retrace the particular steps one initially happened to take; what one must retrace is the essential logical structure.

As an example of reduction, let us take the higher-level concept "friend," and identify at least some of the intermediate concepts linking it to perceptual reality. The process of reduction consists in asking repeatedly: what depends on what? In other words: what does one have to know in order to reach and understand a given step in concept formation?

We must begin with a definition. A "friend" designates a person in a certain kind of human relationship, in contrast with an acquaintance, a stranger, or an enemy. In essence, the relationship involves mutual knowledge, esteem and affection; as a result, the individuals take pleasure in each other's company, communicate with a high degree of intimacy, and display a mutual benevolence, each sincerely wishing the other well. To be able to identify such a complex relationship, one must obviously have formed many earlier concepts, such as "man," "knowledge," "pleasure." Let us focus on a central one here, the concept "esteem."

Again we ask: what does this concept depend on? "Esteem" designates a certain kind of favorable opinion or appraisal; one man "esteems" another when he recognizes certain character traits or qualities in the other which he estimates as being of significant (moral) value. To grasp such a concept, therefore, one must first know many concepts that come still earlier, including, beneath all, the concept "value."

The same root is presupposed by the concept "affection." "Affection" is an emotional response that derives from esteem, i.e., from the recognition of one's values in the character of another. If one had not yet reached the concept "value" in any terms, he might very well feel something for another man, but he would be unable to identify the feeling as "affection."

Now let us take another step. How does one reduce the concept "value"? "Value" is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. What earlier concepts does this presuppose? Among other things, an individual must first learn that man is a being capable of acting to gain various objects, i.e., he must grasp the concept "purpose"; and he must also learn that man has the power of selection among various purposes, i.e., he must grasp the concept "choice." Without these concepts, a child cannot form any normative abstractions. such as "good" and "evil," "desirable" and "undesirable," "value" and "disvalue."

One can observe men pursuing various purposes - moving to a table in order to eat a meal, lying down on a bed in order to sleep, etc. - although one cannot conceptualize "purpose" until the various elementary entities and actions involved have first been conceptualized. And one can observe and identify the act of choice introspectively, once one has processed sufficient existential data to have reached the stage of forming and distinguishing introspective concepts. The final steps backwards, in short, do bring us eventually to first-level concepts, such as "table," "bed," "man." At this point, the reduction has been completed. It ends when we the level of ostensive concepts, which we define by directly pointing to the entity.

To sum up, here are the elements of the logical chain we have been identifying, this time in ascending order: "Men have to choose among various purposes by means of their values. This fact generates certain kinds of mutual estimates and emotions, including esteem and affection, which are the basis for a certain kind of human relation, friendship."

Now what are the advantages of knowing such a chain? Part of the answer is: self-protection.

For example, if someone were to say to you now: "Man is determined, 'choice' is a myth, no one can help anything he does, so we should all have compassion and be friendly to one another." Your immediate reply would be: "`Friendly?' How can you use that term?" The concept "friendship," rests on the concept "choice." If determinism is true and "choice" is a myth, then there can be no such higher-level abstractions as "value," or "affection," or "friendship." In short, now that you know the conceptual roots of "friendship," - the chain linking it to the facts of reality - you know the rules of its proper use and you can spot any egregious misuse. You can thus guard the clarity - the identity - of the concept in your own mind.

Or if a man tells you: "I disagree with your ideas, I object to your desires, I disapprove of your associates, your actions, your choices, but we're friends anyway, because I'm criticizing you for your own good and I like you just the same," (a claim that is not so uncommon as you might think, especially among relatives) you would immediately reply: "If you reject everything about me, how can you like me? For what attributes? What meaning does `friendship' have once you detach it from the concept of `values'?"

Errors of this kind are common. The fallacy involved was identified for the first time by Nathaniel Branden. He called it the fallacy of the "stolen concept." The fallacy consists in using a higher-level concept while denying or ignoring its hierarchical roots. i.e.. one or more of the earlier concepts on which it logically depends. This is the intellectual equivalent of standing on the fourtieth floor of a skyscraper while dynamiting the first thirty-nine. The higher-level concept - "friendship," in the above examples - is "stolen," because the individual involved has no logical right to use it. He is an epistemological parasite: he seizes, without understanding, a term created and made possible by other men, who DO observe the necessary hierarchical structure.

The reason that stolen concepts are so prevalent is that most people (even most philosophers) have no idea of the "roots" of a concept. They treat every concept as a primary, as a first-level abstraction, which means: they tear the concept from any place in a hierarchy, and thereby detach it from reality. Thereafter, its use is subject to nothing but caprice or unthinking habit, with no objective guidelines for the mind to follow. The result is confusion, contradiction, and the conversion of language into mere verbiage.

The antidote to this cognitive poision is the process of reduction. Reduction completes the job of definition by taking you from the initial definition through the definitions of the next lower level, and then of the next lower, until you reach the direct perception of reality. This is the only means by which the initial definition itself can be made fully clear.

Pseudo-concepts cannot be reduced to observational data - and this is the proof that such concepts are invalid. Invalid concepts are words that represent attempts to integrate errors, contradictions or false propositions, such as concepts originating in mysticism (e.g., "ghost," "god," "gremlin") - or words without specific definitions which can mean anything to anyone, such as modern anti-concepts like "extremism," "McCarthyism," and "isolationism". Any such concept, or alleged concept, is inherently detached from reality and invalidates every proposition or process of thought in which it is used as a cognitive assertion.

What is the test of an invalid concept? The fact that it cannot be reduced to the perceptual level. In other words: nothing in reality gives rise to the concept. The test is not simply that the referent is unobservable. Science, for instance, regularly refers to atoms, genes, x- rays, and other such phenomena. But in these cases one can identify the objective evidence supporting the concepts. One can define the sequence by which men were led from observations step by step to a series of conclusions, which were ultimately integrated into new concepts to designate hitherto unknown entities. In regard to the key terms of religion, by contrast, this is precisely what cannot be done. The referents of "god," "angel," and "devil" are not only unobservable; the terms themselves cannot be connected by any process to the perceptual level. This is the proof that such concepts are invalid.

Reduction is necessary in regard to all higher-level thinking.

Propositions too (if non-axiomatic) must be brought step by step to the perceptual level. They are based on antecedent cognitions in the chain of evidence that led to them - going back ultimately to direct observation.

To a mind that does not grasp this chain, a higher-level proposition is arbitrary, non-contextual, non-objective, i.e., detached from reality and from the requirements of human cognition. This is precisely why proof of an idea is necessary. Proof is a form of reduction. The conclusion to be proved is a higher-level cognition, whose link to reality lies in its premises; which eventually lead back to the perceptual level. Proof, in other words, is a form of retracing the hierarchical steps of cognition. (As with conceptual reduction, so with proof: the process identifies the essential links in the chain, the necessary logical structure relating a given content to observational data.)

For example, it is not an axiom that "man has property rights." Property rights are a consequence of a man's right to life: which latter we can establish only if we know the nature and value of man's life; which presupposes, among other things, that objective value-judgments are possible; which presupposes that objective knowledge is possible; which depends on a certain relation between man's mind and reality, i.e., between consciousness and existence. If you do not know and conform to this kind of structure, you can neither defend property rights nor define the concept nor apply it properly.

Proof, therefore, is not a process of deriving a conclusion from arbitrary premises, nor even from arbitrarily selected true premises. Proof is the process of establishing a conclusion by identifying the proper hierarchy of its premises, and by following backward the order of logical dependence, terminating with the directly perceptual.

Certainty

Observe that this is a philosophically neutral definition: An objectivist achieves a state of certainty when he has modified his mental images to bring them into accord with reality. A subjectivist achieves certainty when he has modified his perceived reality to bring it into accord with his mental images.

Observe also that this definition allows for degrees of certainty - certainty need not be absolute: the closer the degree of correlation between the mental image and reality, the higher the degree of certainty experienced. Absolute certainty would correspond to a complete congruency between the image and reality. And the complete absence of certainty would correspond to a state wherein there was no mental image at all of the aspect of reality under consideration - a state of complete ignorance.

Certainty is not an unconditional prerequisite to life's activities. One can go through life without being certain of many things: You are uncertain every time you go hunting or fishing. You are uncertain when you plant a garden, when you look for a word in the dictionary (one of my grumbles is in not finding the word at all - or finding it accompanied by a grossly inadequate definition, such as the word "certainty"), when you go to town - with or without your umbrella (although in this last example, I am tempted to say that there is a kind of "negative certainty" involved!)

A "reasonable expectation" is sufficient to cope with a vast number of situations.

Are there things about which we MUST be certain? Yes, I believe there are two such things:

• 1. The Axiomatic Concepts. These are the foundation of human knowledge, and thus are the foundation of all subsets of human knowledge, including certainty. As Aristotle remarked, in considering Axiomatic Concepts: "For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis.... such a principle is the most certain of all."
• 2. Rationality. This is the ability of the human mind to perceive and understand Reality. One of the facts of reality relevant to this context is the fact that human beings are neither omniscient nor infallible, and thus to ground the concept of certainty on either or both of these unwarranted notions is to demand something that does not exist in reality.

In the real world, certainty is rarely a Boolean phenomenon: it is seldom the case that you have either absolute certainty or total doubt about something. Those who attempt to impose such an alternative on the idea of certainty are implicitly assuming that a human being must be both omniscient and infallible. They assert that to have ABSOLUTE certainty about something, one must have TOTAL knowledge of that thing, and that to have absolute CERTAINTY, there must be no room for the slightest error in one's judgment. Neither omniscience nor infallibility are attributes possessed by human beings.

The statement "There is no such thing as absolute certainty" - or any variation of this statement - manifests the fallacy of self-exclusion: The statement itself is intended to be absolutely certain.

Kant divided the world into two domains: the domain of phenomena and the domain of noumena. Phenomena, he claimed, are events as perceived by the human mind - they are sensations. Noumena are the causes of phenomena - they are the so-called things-in-themselves, the objects that really exist. Kant concluded that human beings can never know the noumena directly: noumena are the sources of the signals that act on our senses, and we can perceive only the signals, not the sources. According to Kant, then, we cannot ever really know anything definite about the noumena.

But when he says "We cannot know anything definite about them" he is saying something definite about them: that their essential nature is such as to preclude our having definite knowledge of that nature. But Kant's statement itself explicitly asserts such definite knowledge, and is thus another example of the fallacy of self-exclusion.

The notion of certainty has its roots in the process of concept formation. As Rand has observed "A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted." To form a concept, a man does not have to make the particular measurements - nor even know how to make the measurements - "he merely has to observe the element of similarity," and recognize that "the relevant measurements must exist in SOME quantity, but may exist in ANY quantity."

"Similarity is grasped perceptually; in observing it, man is not and does not have to be aware of the fact that it involves a matter of measurement. It is the task of science to identify that fact."

(Quotes are from INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY, Chapter 2, which contains an extended account of the nature of the measurement process.)

Here are some examples:

• When I go hunting - my certainty lies in the knowledge that food animals do exist and can be obtained through my efforts. My uncertainty lies in not knowing the precise location of the animals and not knowing the exact actions needed to obtain them.
• When I plant a garden - my certainty lies in the knowledge that food plants can be grown. My uncertainty lies in not knowing exactly what conditions are required to grow a particular plant in a particular place.
• When I look for a word in the dictionary - my certainty lies in the knowledge that words exist and that they can be defined. My uncertainty lies in not knowing if the particular word I want is in a particular place and has been given a suitable definition.
• When I go to town - I am certain that it does rain. But I am uncertain as to whether it will rain at a particular location at a particular time.

With regard to Rationality - my certainty lies in the knowledge that my mind can function as an accurate identifier of reality. But I may be uncertain about the accuracy of a particular application of my mind to a specific identification. My safety lies in carefully reducing the specific identification to the precise perceptual concretes upon which it is founded. The percepts are certain, and if I have correctly built my identification upon them then it too will be certain.

"Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none ABSOLUTELY certain."

Now we can see the flaw in this contention: the word "statements" implicitly subsumes both aspects of concept-formation. When the "statements" are about the particular measureable characteristics of phenomena, then they are open to uncertainty. But when the "statements" are integrated percepts of the phenomena, then they are certain.

"If certainty is unattainable, how can we decide how close we are to it, which is what a probability estimate is?"

In this question the word "certainty" means "infallably exact precision in measurement." There is no such thing - the world just isn't built this way. This is an improper definition of "certainty." A probability estimate is fundamentally not a statement about reality but a statement about my knowledge of reality. Reality is not probable - it is fact.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

When Bertrand Russell said this, he should have put "I think" at the end of it.

The flaw in Russell's remark lies in the implicit meaning of "certain of themselves." The fools and fanatics cause trouble not because of their certainty, but because of their social behavior. It is wrong to blame certainty per se for the choices and actions of people who assert certainty. That's rather like blaming guns for murder. Guns don't kill people - people kill people.

Certainty "creates confidence in one's course of action as an already established fact. It provides the basis for progress into new areas unencountered previously." This notion is critically important to the development of man's cognitive behavior; the basic certainty of the elemental act of conceptualizing lies at the root of all his subsequent conscious behavior. A great number of man's concepts are derived not directly from perceptual concretes, but from the integration of previously created concepts (the process Rand calls "abstraction from abstractions"). If the previously created concepts were not "already established facts" there would be no way to build reliably upon them, and man would be restricted to living a cognitive life not much higher than that of the lesser animals: restricted to a merely perceptual awareness of the world.

I believe it is possible for a person to live without certainty - but only without his own inner certainty. Doing so, he goes through life as an intellectual, moral and spiritual parasite: a parasite on other people who DO possess certainty. As Branden has observed, the fundamental act of a human being is the choice "to think - or not to think." The act of concept- formation lies at the base of all other human behavior. The conviction of certainty regarding this act is a prerequisite to all thought. If you don't think, you can stay alive only by being a parasite on the thinking of others.

Probability

• 1. It is used to express a judgment about the occurrence of a phenomenon: "I'll probably go to town this afternoon." "The ice-cream parlor will quite likely be out of strawberry again." "The next president will surely be a varmint criminal." "It is more probable that the next president will be a varmint criminal than that the ice-cream parlor will be out of strawberry." In each case what is expressed is a surmise or conjecture - a statement of my judgment about a situation. Such judgments are not precisely quantifiable, but are combinations of my ignorance, my partial knowledge, and my extrapolations from previous experience.
• 2. It is used to express knowledge about the frequency of occurrence of a phenomenon: "The probability of a coin falling heads-up is 1/2" "The probability of dice showing 12 is 1/36" "It is more probable that a coin will fall heads-up than that the dice will show 12."

No probability can be attached to a unique event; that is, an event that belongs to a class where there is only one member and no prior ones.

The difference between probability and likelihood: Probability is a precise measurement of the occurrence of a phenomenon resulting from scientific laws. Likelihood denotes the occurrence of a phenomenon resulting from conscious choice. Thus probability can be expressed with mathematical precision - likelihood can be expressed only in terms of "greater" or "lesser."

Expense

That is a frequently-heard term nowadays, and whether the word used is "expense" or "cost" the same meaning is intended. I believe it is a wrong meaning, and that the term is a cruel misrepresentation of the facts.

The statement has two implications:

• That a transfer of wealth has occurred from person A to person B in the form of a payment for phenomenon C.
• That if C had not occurred, the wealth would have remained in the possession of A.
• Neither of these implications is factual.

The implication is that the Taxpayer paid Daddy Warbucks for the New Gun. But this is not the case. Daddy Warbucks received payment from the accounting office of the Department of Defense - he got a cheque from the government for $Mega. And too, if this particular contract had never been issued (and the New Gun had never been manufactured) the $Mega would have stayed, not in the pocket of the Taxpayer but in the coffers of the government.

In fact, the whole scheme was done at government expense. The fact that the government got its money by robbing a selected group of people does not in ANY way implicate those people in the actions of the government.

Consider a personal example: If you are robbed of $100 by a hoodlum, and the hoodlum subsequently uses part of that money to finance an abortion for his girlfriend, can it be said that this abortion occurred at your expense?

Did you participate in the abortion? No, you did not. It was performed by a quack doctor of whose very existence you were completely unaware.

Did you finance the abortion? No, you did not. The doctor received his payment from the hoodlum. The doctor didn't know where the hoodlum got the money, or even that you exist.

Did you condone the abortion? No, you did not. You didn't even KNOW about the abortion!

There is absolutely no reasonable way, in either of these examples, that the third party (the taxpayer in the first case, and you personally in the second case) can be construed as a participant, unless he knows about and sanctions the behavior of the other two parties.

And here we see the underlying motivation of those who use this phrase "at taxpayers' expense": the desire to impose upon YOU personally the moral culpability of sanctioning the behavior of the government and the people who deal with it. What they say, in effect, is that because you are the victim of an act of robbery (taxation) you are therefore responsible morally for the manner in which the robber uses the money he has stolen from you.

This same viciousness can be observed in another assertion I encounter frequently when I chide people for using the word "we" when referring to the actions of the government. They reply with "Well, you're a taxpayer too!" The fact that I am a victim is being used as justification for assigning to me moral culpability for the behavior of the thief. I call this the GRATUITOUS INCULPATION fallacy.

You might chastise me for attributing to the people who use these arguments a motivation they do not intend. And by and large you are right: they do not intend to perpetrate an evil, but that IN FACT is what they are doing. I call this the "Road to Hell" syndrome. In fact, their intentions do not matter; it is only the consequences of their behavior that matter - the consequences that actually have an effect in the world. The most wicked people are those who sincerely believe that what they are doing is good. If you wish to know the true nature of someone who uses the statements and arguments I presented above, merely describe to him why those statements and arguments are in fact evil. And then see if he abandons them.

To Be

Here, "to be" is defined by referring to the concept of existence. This is a more-or-less adequate definition of the term, but it does not convey the genuine fundamentality of the idea of existence.

Consider what the function of a definition is. A proper definition will describe the fundamental nature of a term - in the process using other terms which are fundamental to the first term. For example: "orphan" would be defined by using the term "parent". But "parent" could easily be defined without reference to the term "orphan" at all, because the idea of "parent" is fundamental to the idea of "orphan" - not the other way around. To define "parent" we must refer to terms that are fundamental to it, such as "sexually mature lifeform" - and so on, down the ladder of fundamentality.

Thus we define Z in terms of Y. Y in terms of X. X in terms of W... D in terms of C. C in terms of B. B in terms of A. But do we then define A in terms of Z? No. The attic rests on the main floor. The main floor rests on the basement. The basement rests on the foundation. And the foundation rests on bedrock. But the bedrock does not rest on the attic. Sooner or later, an ultimate fundamentality is reached. In building a house, that ultimate fundamentality is the bedrock. In physics, that ultimate fundamentality is the First Law of Thermodynamics. In epistemology that ultimate fundamentality is known as an Axiomatic Concept. An axiomatic concept can be described, it can be explained, but it cannot be "defined" simply because there are no terms which are fundamental to it. An axiomatic concept is a term which MUST (by virtue of its very nature) be accepted and used in the act of defining any and all other terms. Indeed, one of the primary distinguishing characteristics of an axiomatic concept is the fact that it must be accepted and used even in any attempt to deny it! It is inescapable.

The three axiomatic concepts are Existence, Identity, and Consciousness.

That the world exists is an idea which is inherent, implicitly or explicitly, in ALL other ideas. That things which exist are what they are (have an identity) is also such an idea. And that YOU have a consciousness, which recognizes (or, if you wish, denies) this existence and identity, is another fundamental - which you accept and use in the process of any cognitive endeavor. Which is to say that you accept and use your consciousness in any act of consciousness.

"To be" is a verbal expression which asserts the fact of existence.

References

A reference is a method of obtaining information about another person.

A, being unacquainted with C, and wishing to make a judgment about him, has two means of doing so: by direct observation and consultation or by referring to another person's observations, in the form of a reference provided by B, an acquaintance of C. B, however, may or may not have a previous acquaintance with A. If A knows B then there is some justification in his asking B for information about C, because A will have made an estimate of the validity of B's powers of observation and judgment, and will therefore be able to make some valuation of the reference. If A does not know B then it is certainly not advisable for him to place much, if any, weight on the information provided by B. After all, C is certainly not going to select a reference source who would say bad things about him! If A accepts a reference from a person with whom he is not acquainted, he has gained no useful information about C, because the most undesirable people can usually provide the most impeccable references.

To ask for a reference is, at best, of very limited usefulness; at worst it is an intellectual cop-out. If I want to know what kind of person you are I will make my own observations and base upon them my own judgment, I won't pass the buck to someone else.

Envy

In a free market, where men earn their wealth and distinction by trading their skills and achievements, a man's long-range failure, like his long- range success, is an objective reflection of his ability. It is precisely this inexorable rule of capitalism - "to each according to his ability" - that wounds the self-esteem of the marxist and engenders the widespread hatred for capitalism. But there is an even worse aspect to envy when it is the motive of a man who is willing to make himself worse off in order to bring another down to his level. Do not fool yourself by thinking that altruists are motivated by compassion for the suffering: they are motivated by hatred for the successful. To be rational is to be successful in dealing with reality. Thus is explained much of the existing hatred for rationality. But altruism has no power over its victims except by their own consent, which means: by their acceptance of guilt for the crime of living and of producing values - of being successful.

The envy today's intellectuals feel is not the plausibly healthy desire to attain what others have attained, but an ugly pleasure in seeing others lose what they have attained. Envy is not the desire to emulate the achievements of others, nor is it primarily the desire to steal other people's values; it is, rather, the desire to obliterate those values. The envier has little interest in acquiring the other person's possessions for himself. He would like to see the other person robbed, dispossessed, stripped, humiliated or hurt. His ideas are not ideas in favor of anything, but are a means of expressing his hatred of knowldge, of achievement, of happiness, of man - his political views are an expression of his more fundamental spiritual nihilism.

Instinct

A largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without the involvment of reason.

Scientists who use the term "instinct" never define it, and rarely even attempt to do so. The conclusion I derive from all their usages is that instinct means "behavior for which I am not able to adduce any other cause."

Nathaniel Branden (PSE-23): "There is no such thing. There are 3 categories in terms of which animal behavior can be explained: 1. Actions which are reflexes. 2. Actions which are guided directly by an animal's pleasure-pain sensory apparatus and which involve the faculty of consciousness but not a process of learning - such as moving toward warmth. 3. Actions which are the result of learning. Behavior that has not been traced to one of these categories or to some combination of them has not been explained."

Philosophers have long debated the causes of human behavior: heredity or environment? Are heroes and villains made or born? Objectivists know that nature and nurture are only part of the answer - two-thirds, to be exact. The remaining third is individual free will. This is to say that man is capable of making choices which are causal primaries. The fundamental act of free will is the choice: to think or not to think. If you do not choose the former, then you revert to heredity and environment by default. They'll call the tune if you don't call it for yourself. Everybody is motivated by some continually shifting mixture of the three factors, different for each of us, at each minute in our lives. In terms of human behavior, this is the basis for all causation. History isn't determined by some mysterious impersonal machinery, but by people deciding to use their minds or sloughing off that decision.

Most psychologists ignore the mind's role in mediating the links between genes and human behavior. Hormones, while not exercising absolute control over behavior, can assert a substantial influence over behavior. If the creature's volitional consciousness then cooperates with this influence, the result could be the manifestation of complex behavior. Another thing to consider is the propensity for self-assertion: a baby grasps because that is the natural function-potential of its hand, just as eyes see, legs walk, and a mind thinks.

You can't pick and choose with instincts: you have to take the lot. You can't allow Venus into the Pantheon and bolt the door on Mars. And once you take on such things as "fighting", "territorial imperative" and "rank order", you are in a messy quagmire of terms that have little, if any, correspondence with reality.

Watching the behavior of the professional psychologists - bonding, bickering, preening, flirting and engaging in mututal rhetorical grooming - one must concur with their basic premise: they are all animals, descendants of a vast lineage of replicators sprung from primordial pond scum.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, April 1992, contains a fascinating essay by Ronald Melzack entitled PHANTOM LIMBS. This essay presents the best case I have ever seen for a phenomenon that might be called "instinct" although surprisingly, the word "instinct" does not appear in the essay.

The brain contains a network of neurons, that, in addition to responding to sensory stimulation, continuously generates a characteristic pattern of impulses indicating that the body is intact and unequivocally one's own. If such a matrix operated in the absence of sensory inputs from the periphery of the body, it would create the impression of having a limb even when that limb has been removed.

Phantom seeing and hearing, like phantom limbs, are also generated by the brain in the absence of sensory input. People whose vision has been impaired by cataracts or by the loss of a portion of the visual processing system in the brain sometimes report highly detailed visual experiences.

Phantom sights and sounds occur when the brain loses its normal input from a sensory system. In the absence of input, cells in the central nervous system become more active. The brain's intrinsic mechanisms transform that neuronal activity into meaningful experiences.

The parietal lobe has been shown to be essential to the sense of self - to the recognition of the self and to the evaluation of sensory signals. Patients who have suffered a lesion of the parietal lobe in one hemisphere have been known to push one of their own legs out of a hospital bed because they were convinced it belonged to a stranger.

When sensory signals from the periphery reach the brain, they pass through several systems in parallel. As the signals are analyzed, information about them is shared among the various systems and converted into an integrated output, which is sent to other parts of the brain. Somewhere in the brain the output is transformed into a conscious perception.

As a system analyzes sensory information, it imprints its characteristic neurosignature on the output. The specific neurosignature of an individual would be determined by the pattern of connectivity among neurons in the system - that is, by such factors as which neurons are connected to one another and by the number, types and strengths of the synapses.

When sensory input activates two brain cells simultaneously, synapses between the cells form stronger connections. Eventually the process gives rise to whole assemblies of linked neurons, so that a signal going into one part of an assembly spreads through the rest, even if the assembly extends across broad areas of the brain.

The connections of this neuromatrix are primarily determined not by experience but by the genes. The matrix, though, could later be sculpted by experience, which would add or delete, strengthen or weaken, existing synapses. I think the matrix is largely prewired because many people who were born without an arm or a leg do nonetheless experience a vivid phantom.

Under normal circumstances, then, the myriad qualities of sensation people experience emerge from variations in sensory input. This input is both analyzed and shaped into complex experiences of sensation and self by the larely prewired neuromatrix. Yet even in the absence of external stimuli, much the same range of experiences can be generated by other signals passing through the neuromatrix - such as those produced by the spontaneous firing of neurons in the matrix itself or the spinal cord or the periphery. Regardless of the source of the input to the matrix, the result would be the same: rapid spread of the signals throughout the matrix and perception of a limb located within a unitary self, even when the actual limb is gone.

Luck

Lucky, fortunate, happy, providential, mean meeting with unforseen success. Lucky stresses the agency of chance in bringing about a favorable result. Fortunate suggests being rewarded beyond one's deserts. Happy combines the implications of lucky and fortunate with a stress on being blessed. Providential implies the help or intervention of a higher power.

"There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe. 'Good luck' follows careful preparation; 'bad luck' comes from sloppiness." ... Heinlein

"Every scientist hopes for the good fortune to recognize one of nature's suprises and the good sense to make the most out of it." ... Robert Hazen

"Luck favors the prepared mind." ... Pasteur

When Napoleon's eagle eye flashed down the list of officers proposed for promotion to generals, he used to scribble in the margin of a name: "Is he lucky?"

Standard vs Purpose - Man qua Man - to Survive or to Flourish

Consider a house. Its standard is the foundation which it is built upon. Its purpose is the function of providing shelter for people. You can see that it could not fulfill its purpose without having its standard; but observe also that its standard is not the reason for its existence.

Now consider a man. His standard is his life - the life which is manifested in his biological mechanism. His purpose is also his life - but here "life" is used in a different sense, meaning the process of achieving values. I will refer to these two different aspects of life by the terms B- life and V-life. In the Objectivist writings there is considerable emphasis on the idea that "man's life is the standard of values." (Here is meant B- life.) There is also much emphasis placed on the idea that "man's life qua man" (V-life) is the purpose of man's existence. Unfortunately, there is too little attention paid to differentiating between the two quite different aspects of the term "life" which are being considered. The result is that many people think in terms of B-life when they should be using the term V- life. An example is the man who claims that, if faced with a terrible situation in which he had to choose between saving his own life or saving his wife's (or child's) life, he would, according to the principles of Objectivism, have to save his own life, because, after all, Objectivism tells him that his own biological existence is the most important value he can hold, doesn't it? This is surely not what Objectivism implies, nor is it what Rand means to say. You will recall Galt's words to Dagny at the time when he is about to be captured:

"But if they get the slightest suspicion of what we are to each other, they will have you on a torture rack.... At the first mention of a threat to you, I will kill myself.... I do not care to see you enduring a drawn-out murder. There will be no values for me to seek after that - and I do not care to exist without values."

The extremes of living are "subsist" and "flourish." A seeming ambiguity in the Objectivist morality arises from a confusion of the idea of man's life as being "mere literal existence" with the idea of "flourishing" (as in "survive as man qua man"). The choice to "live" implies BOTH of these aspects of life. The choice must include all the things that characterize a HUMAN life, the only kind of life we are able to choose, if we are to be human.

In fact, a morality designed to show in detail how to flourish is a mistaken thing to ask for, since every human being is a specifically distinct and different entity. "Flourishing" for a particular life means applying the basic principles derived from "survival" morality to any of an infinite number of possible individual contexts.

If Ayn Rand were to have discovered the physics of baseball, we would be wrong to criticize her by exclaiming, "But she says nothing about how to be a good shortstop or a good catcher's mitt manufacturer or a good baseball card collector." There is, in fact, no way for her to do all of this. Individuals with such specific interests must figure out the specific techniques for themselves, using their power of reason. Those who want more than basic moral principles need to consult technical manuals, self help books and other sources of special information, rather than fooling themselves into thinking that success in life can come from a detailed recipe.

To demand such a detailed recipe is to demand: "Tell me what to do! Give me not merely principles, but all their specific applications - give me the recipe for success so I can avoid having to choose for myself - so I can avoid the effort of having to think about how to apply principles to my own specific situation." It amounts to an attempt to escape from the requirement that each individual must make his own choices and accept responsibility for his own life and success.

The philosophy of Objectivism is very much all-encompassing, but one must be able to conceptualize and abstract from principles rather than demand a plethora of specific examples for guidance. The concrete problems one encounters in life cannot be dealt with as isolated random events. They must be considered in the general context of one's life-goals, and the only way to do this is to think in principles. Objectivism doesn't provide a "Dear Abby" list of personalized answers to specific questions but it does provide answers, if you know how to derive them, and the best way is to start at the foundation, by absorbing and integrating Objectivism as a whole philosophy, then abstracting principles from that foundation, and then applying those principles to the specific situations in your own personal life.

You are the person that YOU choose to be, and the "purpose" of your life is what YOU choose for it to be. You can't get these things from any external source. Given the biocentric precept that volition is a first cause, you must CHOOSE to invest your life with purpose, else you will become (by default) what Rand so aptly described as the most contemptible of all people: the man without a purpose.

Just as you must choose the values that invest your SELF with purpose, so you must also invest your personal relationships with appropriate internal value. You must be explicitly aware of the value that accompanies each of your relationships - of the importance that lies within them. This is especially true of sex. Since sex is the source of the greatest physical pleasure available to a human being, you must be punctilious in choosing the value of the people you have sex with, lest you cheapen yourself spiritually. This explains why promiscuity is a bad practice: it associates very high physical pleasure with low (or non-existent) spiritual value.

Flourishing and investiture: Is your life a field of weeds, or a cultivated garden of blossoming flowers?

It's the difference between just trying to stay alive, and having something worthwhile to live for.

Nonsense

In considering "what is nonsense?" I began with the notion that nonsense is something that manifests a denial of the Law of Identity. This would define it as a metaphysical concept. But then, how can I identify nonsense when I encounter it? Oh sure, some things I can see immediately as nonsense. They are a subset of the things that I can understand. But what of other things which I cannot understand? Like the Tensor Calculus - might that be nonsense? I have no way of determining. And the conundrum cannot be resolved by reference to higher level intellects either.

For example: The IDEA of my little computer would have been nonsense to Archimedes (I suppose the computer itself would have been magic to him), thus it is clear that a perfectly sensible idea can be regarded as nonsense - even to someone endowed with the highest level of intellectual ability. Therefore, if it is considered as a metaphysical concept, there is no way that "nonsense" can be precisely identified.

This leads me to believe that it can only be accurately considered as an epistemological concept. It then becomes relative to the person who is making the identification. Thus, just as one man's meat is another man's poison, one man's sense can be another man's nonsense. As the Red Queen said: "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"

Compromise

For example, between theft and non-theft.

If I want to steal $10 from you and I respond to your protest by suggesting that we "compromise" and I will steal only $5 - this is no compromise! It is relinquishment, by you, of your principle of non-theft - and acceptance, again by you, of my principle of theft. Once you have accepted the principle of theft, then we can indeed compromise - on how much theft you will be subjected to.

Compromise is possible only on terms of equality - that is, between ability and ability (though one man's ability may be greater than another's), not between ability and incompetence, nor between intelligence and stupidity, nor between trade and theft. Compromise must be between equals in kind, which might differ in degree, but it can't be between opposite kinds.

You can compromise between 5 lbs and 7 lbs, but you can't compromise between 5 lbs and 3 gallons.