The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 20

This last is not a coincidence: in regard to social issues, "inflation" does not mean growth, enlargement or expansion, it means an "undue" -or improper or fraudulent-expansion. The expansion of a country's currency (which, incidentally, cannot be perpetrated by private citizens, only by the government) consists in palming off, as values, a stream of paper backed by nothing but promises (or hot air) and getting actual values, the citizens' goods or services, in return-until the country's wealth is drained. A similar activity, in private performance, is the pa.s.sing of checks on a non-existent bank account. But, in private performance, this is regarded as a crime-and most people understand why such an activity cannot last for long.

Today, people are beginning to understand that the government's account is overdrawn, that a piece of paper is not the equivalent of a gold coin, or an automobile, or a loaf of bread-and that if you attempt to falsify monetary values, you do not achieve abundance, you merely debase the currency and go bankrupt.

["Moral Inflation," ARL, III, 12, 1.]

Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the gouvernment: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.

["Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?" TON, May 1962, 18.]

The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible a.s.sets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare on other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold.

[Alan Greenspan, "Gold and Economic Freedom," CUI, 101.]

There is only one inst.i.tution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only inst.i.tution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production.

["Egalitarianism and Inflation," PWNI, 156; pb 128.]

The "wage-price spiral," which is merely a consequence of inflation, is being blamed as its cause, thus deflecting the blame from the real culprit: the government. But the government's guilt is hidden by the esoteric intricacies of the national budget and of international finance -which the public cannot be expected to understand-while the disaster of nationwide strikes is directly perceivable by everyone and gives plausibility to the public's growing resentment of labor unions.

["The Moratorium on Brains," ARI., 1, 3, 3.]

You have heard economists say that they are puzzled by the nature of today's problem: they are unable to understand why inflation is accompanied by recession-which is contrary to their Keynesian doctrines; and they have coined a ridiculous name for it: "stagflation." Their theories ignore the fact that money can function only so long as it represents actual goods-and that at a certain stage of inflating the money supply, the government begins to consume a nation's investment capital, thus making production impossible.

["Egalitarianism and Inflation," PWNI, 163; pb 134.]

See also CAPITALISM; DEFICIT FINANCING; GOLD STANDARD; MONEY; SAVINGS.

Innate Ideas. See Tabula Rasa.

"Instinct." An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An "instinct" is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic.... Your fear of death is not a love for life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer-and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

[GS, FNI, 148; pb 121.]

[Man] is born naked and unarmed, without fangs, claws, horns or "instinctual" knowledge.

["The Anti-Industrial Revolution," NL, 136.]

Man has no automatic code of survival. He has no automatic course of action, no automatic set of values. His senses do not tell him automatically what is good for him or evil, what will benefit his life or endanger it, what goals he should pursue and what means will achieve them, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. His own consciousness has to discover the answers to all these questions-but his consciousness will not function automatically.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS , 11; pb 19.]

Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.

Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but. at birth, both are "tabula rasa."

[Ibid., 23; pb 27.]

See also EMOTIONS; FREE WILL; FREUD; GOAL-DIRECTED ACTION; TABULA RASA.

Integration (Mental). Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a pa.s.sive state, but an active process that consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration.

[ITOE, 5.].

Integration is a cardinal function of man's consciousness on all the levels of his cognitive development. First, his brain brings order into his sensory chaos by integrating sense data into percepts; this integration is performed automatically; it requires effort, but no conscious volition.

His next step is the integration of percepts into concepts, as he learns to speak. Thereafter, his cognitive development consists in integrating concepts into wider and ever wider concepts, expanding the range of his mind. This stage is fully volitional and demands an unremitting effort.

["Art and Cognition," RM, pb 57.]

A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated according to a specific characteristic(s) and united by a specific definition.... [In concept-formation], the uniting involved is not a mere sum, but an integration, i.e., a blending of the units into a single, new mental ent.i.ty which is used thereafter as a single unit of thought (but which can be broken into its component units whenever required).

[ITOE, 11.].

[The] enemies of reason seem to know that integration is the psycho-epistemological key to reason ... and that if reason is to be destroyed, it is man's integrating capacity that has to be destroyed.

["Art and Cognition," RM, pb 77.]

Integration is the essential part of understanding.

["The Comprachicos," NL, 208.]

See also CONCEPT-FORMATION; CONCEPTS; CONSCIOUSNESS; LEARNING; PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY; SENSATIONS; UNDERSTANDING.

Integrity. Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence-that man is an indivisible ent.i.ty, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions-that, like a judge impervious to public opinion, he may not sacrifice his convictions to the wishes of others, be it the whole of mankind shouting pleas or threats against him-that courage and confidence are practical necessities, that courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one's own consciousness.

[GS, FNI, 157; pb 128.]

The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not "selflessness" or "sacrifice," but integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one's convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one's values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent, inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.

["The Ethics of Emergencies," VOS, 51 ; pb 46.]

Integrity does not consist of loyalty to one's subjective whims, but of loyalty to rational principles.

["Doesn't Life Require Compromise?" VOS, 87; pb 69.]

See also COMPROMISE; HONESTY; RATIONALITY; SUBJECTIVISM; SACRIFICE; VIRTUE; WHIMS/WHIM-WORSHIP.

Intellectuals. The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher. The intellectual carries the application of philosophical principles to every field of human endeavor. He sets a society's course by transmitting ideas from the "ivory tower" of the philosopher to the university professor-to the writer-to the artist-to the newspaperman-to the politician-to the movie maker-to the night-club singer-to the man in the street. The intellectual's specific professions are in the field of the sciences that study man, the so-called "humanities," but for that very reason his influence extends to all other professions. Those who deal with the sciences studying nature have to rely on the intellectual for philosophical guidance and information: for moral values, for social theories, for political premises, for psychological tenets and, above all, for the principles of epistemology, that crucial branch of philosophy which studies man's means of knowledge and makes all other sciences possible. The intellectual is the eyes, ears and voice of a free society: it is his job to observe the events of the world, to evaluate their meaning and to inform the men in all the other fields.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 25: pb 27.]

[The intellectuals] are a group that holds a unique prerogative: the potential of being either the most productive or the most parasitical of all social groups.

The intellectuals serve as guides, as trend-setters, as the transmission belts or middlemen between philosophy and the culture. If they adopt a philosophy of reason-if their goal is the development of man's rational faculty and the pursuit of knowledge-they are a society's most productive and most powerful group, because their work provides the base and the integration of all other human activities. If the intellectuals are dominated by a philosophy of irrationalism, they become a society's unemployed and unemployable.

From the early nineteenth century on, American intellectuals-with very rare exceptions-were the humbly obedient followers of European philosophy, which had entered its age of decadence. Accepting its fundamentals, they were unable to deal with or even to grasp the nature of this country.

["A Preview," ARL, 1, 24, 1.]

Historically, the professional intellectual is a very recent phenomenon : he dates only from the industrial revolution. There are no professional intellectuals in primitive, savage societies, there are only witch doctors. There were no professional intellectuals in the Middle Ages, there were only monks in monasteries. In the post-Renaissance era, prior to the birth of capitalism, the men of the intellect-the philosophers, the teachers, the writers, the early scientists-were men without a profession, that is: without a socially recognized position, without a market, without a means of earning a livelihood. Intellectual pursuits had to depend on the accident of inherited wealth or on the favor and financial support of some wealthy protector. And wealth was not earned on an open market, either; wealth was acquired by conquest, by force, by political power, or by the favor of those who held political power. Tradesmen were more vulnerably and precariously dependent on favor than the intellectuals.

The professional businessman and the professional intellectual came into existence together, as brothers born of the industrial revolution. Both are the sons of capitalism-and if they perish. they will perish together. The tragic irony will be that they will have destroyed each other; and the major share of the guilt will belong to the intellectual.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 6; pb 12.]

See also BUSINESSMEN; CULTURE; HISTORY; PHILOSOPHY.

Intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to deal with a broad range of abstractions. Whatever a child's natural endowment, the use of intelligence is an acquired skill. It has to be acquired by a child's own effort and automatized by his own mind, but adults can help or hinder him in this crucial process.

["The Comprachicos," NL. 195.]

[Man] survives by means of man-made products, and ... the source of man-made products is man's intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to grasp the facts of reality and to deal with them long-range (i.e., conceptually). On the axiom of the primacy of existence, intelligence is man's most precious attribute. But it has no place in a society ruled by the primacy of consciousness: it is such a society's deadliest enemy.

Today, intelligence is neither recognized nor rewarded, but is being systematically extinguished in a growing flood of brazenly flaunted irrationality.

["The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made," PWN1, 40; pb 32.]

Intelligence is not an exclusive monopoly of genius; it is an attribute of all men, and the differences are only a matter of degree. If conditions of existence are destructive to genius, they are destructive to every man, each in proportion to his intelligence. If genius is penalized, so is the faculty of intelligence in every other man. There is only this difference: the average man does not possess the genius's power of self-confident resistance, and will break much faster; he will give up his mind, in hopeless bewilderment, under the first touch of pressure.

["Requiem for Man," CUI, 306.]

See also ABSTRACTIONS and CONCRETES; AUTOMATIZATION; CONCEPTS; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); PRIMACY of EXISTENCE vs. PRIMACY of CONSCIOUSNESS; REASON; UNDERSTANDING.

Interest (on loans). If you have wondered how one can start producing, when nature requires time paid in advance, this is the beneficent process that enables men to do it: a successful man lends his goods to a promising beginner (or to any reputable producer)-in exchange for the payment of interest. The payment is for the risk he is taking: nature does not guarantee man's success, neither on a farm nor in a factory. If the venture fails, it means that the goods have been consumed without a productive return, so the investor loses his money; if the venture succeeds, the producer pays the interest out of the new goods, the profits, which the investment enabled him to make.

["Egalitarianism and Inflation," PWNI, 159; pb 131.]

See also CREDIT; INVESTMENT; MONEY; SAVINGS.

Interventionism (economic). A "mixed economy" is a society in the process of committing suicide.

If a nation cannot survive half-slave, half-free, consider the condition of a nation in which every social group becomes both the slave and the enslaver of every other group. Ask yourself how long such a condition can last and what is its inevitable outcome.

When government controls are introduced into a free economy, they create economic dislocations, hardships, and problems which, if the controls are not repealed, necessitate still further controls, which necessitate still further controls, etc. Thus a chain reaction is set up: the victimized groups seek redress by imposing controls on the profiteering groups, who retaliate in the same manner, on an ever widening scale.

["Statism Is the Only Victor in Cold Civil War," Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1962.]

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. By what criterion of justice is a consensus-government to be guided? By the size of the victim's gang.

["The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus," CUI, 205.]

If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

Since there is no rational justification for the sacrifice of some men to others, there is no objective criterion by which such a sacrifice can be guided in practice. All "public interest" legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down ultimately to the grant of an undefined, undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary power to some government officials.

The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly.

["The Pull Peddlers," CUI, 170.]

See also CAPITALISM; FREE MARKET; GOVERNMENT; LOBBYING; MIXED ECONOMY; "PUBLIC INTEREST," the; WELFARE STATE.

Intrinsic Theory of Values. There are, in essence, three schools of thought on the nature of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective. The intrinsic theory holds that the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to the actors and subjects involved. It is a theory that divorces the concept of "good" from beneficiaries, and the concept of "value" from valuer and purpose -claiming that the good is good in, by, and of itself.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 21.]

The intrinsic theory holds that the good resides in some sort of reality, independent of man's consciousness.

[Ibid., 22.]

If a man believes that the good is intrinsic in certain actions, he will not hesitate to force others to perform them. If he believes that the human benefit or injury caused by such actions is of no significance, he will regard a sea of blood as of no significance. If he believes that the beneficiaries of such actions are irrelevant (or interchangeable), he will regard wholesale slaughter as his moral duty in the service of a "higher" good. It is the intrinsic theory of values that produces a Robespierre, a Lenin, a Stalin, or a Hitler. It is not an accident that Eichmann was a Kantian.

[Ibid.]

See also GOOD, the; MORALITY; MYSTICAL ETHICS; OBJECTIVE THEORY OF VALUES; OBJECTIVITY; PHYSICAL FORCE; SOCIAL THEORY OF ETHICS; SUBJECTIVISM.

Introspection. Extrospection is a process of cognition directed outward-a process of apprehending some existent(s) of the external world. Introspection is a process of cognition directed inward-a process of apprehending one's own psychological actions in regard to some existent(s) of the external world, such actions as thinking, feeling, reminiscing, etc. It is only in relation to the external world that the various actions of a consciousness can be experienced, grasped, defined or communicated.

[ITOE, 37.].

A major source of men's earned guilt in regard to philosophy-as well as in regard to their own minds and lives-is failure of introspection. Specifically, it is the failure to identify the nature and causes of their emotions.

An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection-to the conceptual identification of your inner states-you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception. The men who scorn or dread introspection take their inner states for granted, as an irreducible and irresistible primary, and let their emotions determine their actions. This means that they choose to act without knowing the context (reality), the causes (motives), and the consequences (goals) of their actions.

The field of extrospection is based on two cardinal questions: "What do I know?" and "How do I know it?" In the field of introspection, the two guiding questions are: "What do I feel?" and "Why do I feel it?"

["Philosophical Detection," PWNI, 20; pb 17.]

In regard to one's own feelings, only a rigorously conscientious habit of introspection can enable one to be certain of the nature and causes of one's emotional responses.

["The Age of Envy," NL, 154.]

The formation of introspective concepts follows the same principles as the formation of extrospective concepts. A concept pertaining to consciousness is a mental integration of two or more instances of a psychological process possessing the same distinguishing characteristics, with the particular contents and the measurements of the action's intensity omitted-on the principle that these omitted measurements must exist in some quant.i.ty, but may exist in any quant.i.ty (i.e., a given psychological process must possess some content and some degree of intensity, but may possess any content or degree of the appropriate category).

[ITOE, 40.].

See also BEHAVIORISM; CONCEPTS; CONSCIOUSNESS; EMOTIONS; PSYCHOLOGY; RATIONALIZATION; VALUES.

Invalid Concepts. There are such things as invalid concepts, i.e., words that represent attempts to integrate errors, contradictions or false propositions, such as concepts originating in mysticism-or words without specific definitions, without referents, which can mean anything to anyone, such as modern "anti-concepts." Invalid concepts appear occasionally in men's languages, but are usually-though not necessarily-short-lived, since they lead to cognitive dead-ends. An invalid concept invalidates every proposition or process of thought in which it is used as a cognitive a.s.sertion.

[ITOE, 65.].

No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge.

[GS, FNI, 154; pb 126.]

See also "ANTI-CONCEPTS"; CONCEPTS; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); MYSTICISM; "STOLEN CONCEPT," FALLACY of.