The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 34

Principles. A principle is "a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend." Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one's long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it.

The present state of our culture may be gauged by the extent to which principles have vanished from public discussion, reducing our cultural atmosphere to the sordid, petty senselessness of a bickering family that haggles over trivial concretes, while betraying all its major values, selling out its future for some spurious advantage of the moment.

To make it more grotesque, that haggling is accompanied by an aura of hysterical self-righteousness, in the form of belligerent a.s.sertions that one must compromise with anybody on anything (except on the tenet that one must compromise) and by panicky appeals to "practicality."

But there is nothing as impractical as a so-called "practical" man. His view of practicality can best be ill.u.s.trated as follows: if you want to drive from New York to Los Angeles, it is "impractical" and "idealistic" to consult a map and to select the best way to get there; you will get there much faster if you just start out driving at random, turning (or cutting) any corner, taking any road in any direction, following nothing but the mood and the weather of the moment.

The fact is, of course, that by this method you will never get there at all. But while most people do recognize this fact in regard to the course of a journey, they are not so perceptive in regard to the course of their lite and of their country.

["The Anatomy of Compromise," CUI, 144.]

Concrete problems cannot even be grasped, let alone judged or solved, without reference to abstract principles.

["Credibility and Polarization," ARL, I, 1, 3.]

You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational convictions-or a grab-bag of notions s.n.a.t.c.hed at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often than not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew....

You might say, as many people do, that it is not easy always to act on abstract principles. No, it is not easy. But how much harder is it, to have to act on them without knowing what they are?

["Philosophy: Who Needs It," PWNI, 6; pb 5.]

Consider a few rules about the working of principles in practice and about the relationship of principles to goals....

1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.

2. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.

3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

["The Anatomy of Compromise," CUI, 145.]

When men abandon principles (i.e., their conceptual faculty), two of the major results are: individually, the inability to project the future; socially, the impossibility of communication.

["Credibility and Polarization," ARL, I, 1, 3.]

Only fundamental principles, rationally validated, dearly understood and voluntarily accepted, can create a desirable kind of unity among men.

[Ibid., 4.]

See also ANTI-CONCEPTUAL MENTALITY; COMPROMISE; CONCEPTS; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); PHILOSOPHY; PRAGMATISM; REASON; TRUTH.

Prior Certainty of Consciousness. Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of every Witch Doctor (a premise he shared explicitly with Augustine): "the prior certainty of consciousness," the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one's consciousness -which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception-which means: the indiscriminate contents of one's consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform. What followed was the grotesquely tragic spectacle of philosophers struggling to prove the existence of an external world by staring, with the Witch Doctor's blind, inward stare, at the random twists of their conceptions-then of perceptions-then of sensations.

When the medieval Witch Doctor had merely ordered men to doubt the validity of their mind, the philosophers' rebellion against him consisted of proclaiming that they doubted whether man was conscious at all and whether anything existed for him to be conscious of.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 28; pb 28.]

See also AXIOMS; CONSCIOUSNESS; EXISTENCE; IRREDUCIBLE PRIMARIES; PRIMACY of EXISTENCE vs. PRIMACY of CONSCIOUSNESS; SENSATIONS.

Production. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 17.]

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions -and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made-before it can be looted or mooched-made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

["The Meaning of Money," FNI, 105; pb 89.]

Whether it's a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one's own eyes-which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification-which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.

["The Nature of an Artist," FNI, 140; pb 115.]

Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and physical effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different types of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort required to perform unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end, what the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values.

["Patents and Copyrights," CUI, 130.]

The root of production is man's mind; the mind is an attribute of the individual and it does not work under orders, controls and compulsion, as centuries of stagnation have demonstrated. Progress cannot be planned by government, and it cannot be restricted or r.e.t.a.r.ded; it can only be stopped, as every statist government has demonstrated.

["The Anti-Industrial Revolution," NL, 140.]

See also CONSUMPTION; CREATION; CREATORS; ECONOMIC GOOD; ECONOMIC GROWTH; MONEY; PHYSICAL FORCE; PRODUCTIVENESS; PYRAMID OF ABILITY; REASON; STATISM.

Productiveness. The virtue of Productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man's mind sustains his life, the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself. Productive work is the road of man's unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-a.s.sertive-ness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values. "Productive work" does not mean the unfocused performance of the motions of some job. It means the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability. It is not the degree of a man's ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 21; pb 26.]

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to tive-that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values-that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others-that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human-that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay-that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live-that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road-that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the sc.r.a.p heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up-that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who a.s.sumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.

[GS, FNI, 159; pb 130.]

Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work-pride is the result.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 20; pb 25.]

See also AMBITION; CAREER; COMPEt.i.tION; CREATORS; LIFE; MORALITY; PRODUCTION; PURPOSE; PRIDE; RATIONALITY; REASON; VIRTUE.

Proof. "Proof," in the full sense, is the process of deriving a conclusion step by step from the evidence of the senses, each step being taken in accordance with the laws of logic.

[Leonard Peikoff, "Introduction to Logic" lecture series (1974), Lecture 1.]

"You cannot prove that you exist or that you're conscious," they chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence, consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of something to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a knowledge that has learned to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the unproved.

When a savage who has not learned to speak declares that existence must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of non-existence -when he declares that your consciousness must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of unconsciousness-he is asking you to step into a void outside of existence and consciousness to give him proof of both-he is asking you to become a zero gaining knowledge about a zero.

[GS, FNI, 192; pb 154.]

An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be a.n.a.lyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge. It is the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest.

The first and primary axiomatic concepts are "existence," "ident.i.ty" (which is a corollary of "existence") and "consciousness." One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot a.n.a.lyze (or "prove") existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to "prove" them is self-contradictory: it is an attempt to "prove" existence by means of non-existence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness.) [ITOE, 73.].

See also AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS; AXIOMS; COROLLARIES; IRREDUCIBLE PRIMARIES; LOGIC; OBJECTIVITY; PERCEPTION; REASON; SELF-EVIDENT; VALIDATION.

Property Rights. The right to life is the source of all rights-and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

["Man's Rights," VOS, 125; pb 94.]

Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property-by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.

["The Property Status of Airwaves," CUI, 122.]

Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reaiity-to think, to work and to keep the results-which means: the right of property. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of "human rights" versus "property rights," as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that "human rights are superior to "property rights" simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the t.i.tle of "human."

The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man's mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence. You cannot force intelligence to work: those who're able to think, will not work under compulsion; those who will, won't produce much more than the price of the whip needed to keep them enslaved. You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner's terms, by trade and by volitional consent. Any other policy of men toward man's property is the policy of criminals, no matter what their numbers. Criminals are savages who play it short-range and starve when their prey runs out-just as you're starving today, you who believed that crime could be "practical" if your government decreed that robbery was legal and resistance to robbery illegal.

[GS, FNI, 230; pb 182.]

Man has to work and produce in order to support his life. He has to support his life by his own effort and by the guidance of his own mind. If he cannot dispose of the product of his effort, he cannot dispose of his effort; if he cannot dispose of his effort, he cannot dispose of his life. Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 18.]

If some men are ent.i.tled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as "the right to enslave."

A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort....

The right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property, to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide him with property.

The right of free speech means that a man has the right to express his ideas without danger of suppression, interference or punitive action by the government. It does not mean that others must provide him with a lecture hall, a radio station or a printing press through which to express his ideas.

Any undertaking that involves more than one man, requires the voluntary consent of every partic.i.p.ant. Every one of them has the right to make his own decision, but none has the right to force his decision on the others.

There is no such thing as "a right to a job"-there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man's right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no "right to a home," only the right of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no "rights to a 'fair' wage or a 'fair' price" if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product. There are no "rights of consumers" to milk, shoes, movies or champagne if no producers choose to manufacture such items (there is only the right to manufacture them oneself). There are no "rights" of special groups, there are no "rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn." There are only the Rights of Man-rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals.

Property rights and the right of free trade are man's only "economic rights" (they are, in fact, political rights)-and there can be no such thing as "an economic bill of rights." But observe that the advocates of the latter have all but destroyed the former.

["Man's Rights," VOS, 129; pb 96.]

It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.

["The Cashing-in: The Student 'Rebellion,' " CUI, 259.]

The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the inst.i.tution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree-and thus keeps the road open to man's most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 19.]

The inst.i.tution of private property, in the full, legal meaning of the term, was brought into existence only by capitalism. In the pre-capitalist eras, private property existed de facto, but not de jure, i.e., by custom and sufferance, not by right or by law. In law and in principle, all property belonged to the head of the tribe, the king, and was held only by his permission, which could be revoked at any time, at his pleasure. (The king could and did expropriate the estates of recalcitrant n.o.blemen throughout the course of Europe's history.) [Ibid., 13.]

See also CAPITALISM; CAUSALITY; COMMUNISM; CONTRACTS; FASCISM/n.a.z.iSM; FREE SPEECH; FREEDOM; HUMAN RIGHTS and PROPERTY RIGHTS; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; PATENTS and COPYRIGHTS; PRODUCTION; SOCIALISM; STATISM.

Propositions. Since concepts, in the field of cognition, perform a function similar to that of numbers in the field of mathematics, the function of a proposition is similar to that of an equation: it applies conceptual abstractions to a specific problem.

A proposition, however, can perform this function only if the concepts of which it is composed have precisely defined meanings. If, in the field of mathematics, numbers had no fixed, firm values, if they were mere approximations determined by the mood of their users-so that "5," for instance, could mean five in some calculations, but six-and-a-half or four-and-three-quarters in others, according to the users' "convenience"-there would be no such thing as the science of mathematics.

[ITOE, 100.].

See also CONCEPTS; DEFINITIONS; GRAMMAR; INDUCTION and DEDUCTION; LANGUAGE; MEANING (of CONCEPTS); NUMBERS; THOUGHT/THINKING.

Psycho-Epistemology. Psycho-epistemology is the study of man's cognitive processes from the aspect of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious.

["The Psycho-Epistemology of Art," RM, 20; pb 18.]

"Psycho-epistemology," a term coined by Ayn Rand, pertains not to the content of a man's ideas, but to his method of awareness, i.e., the method by which his mind habitually deals with its content."

[Leonard Peikoff, editor's footnote to Ayn Rand's "The Missing Link," PWNI, 47; pb 39.]

The subconscious is an integrating mechanism. Man's conscious mind observes and establishes connections among his experiences; the subconscious integrates the connections and makes them become automatic. For example, the skill of walking is acquired, after many faltering attempts, by the automatization of countless connections controlling muscular movements; once he learns to walk, a child needs no conscious awareness of such problems as posture, balance, length of step, etc.-the mere decision to walk brings the integrated total into his control.

A mind's cognitive development involves a continual process of automatization. For example, you cannot perceive a table as an infant perceives it-as a mysterious object with four legs. You perceive it as a table, i.e., a man-made piece of furniture, serving a certain purpose belonging to a human habitation, etc.; you cannot separate these attributes from your sight of the table, you experience it as a single, indivisible percept-yet all you see is a four-legged object; the rest is an automatized integration of a vast amount of conceptual knowledge which, at one time, you had to learn bit by bit. The same is true of everything you perceive or experience; as an adult, you cannot perceive or experience in a vacuum, you do it in a certain automatized context- and the efficiency of your mental operations depends on the kind of context your subconscious has automatized.

"Learning to speak is a process of automatizing the use (i.e., the meaning and the application) of concepts. And more: all learning involves a process of automatizing, i.e., of first acquiring knowledge by fully conscious, focused attention and observation, then of establishing mental connections which make that knowledge automatic (instantly available as a context), thus freeing man's mind to pursue further, more complex knowledge." (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) The process of forming, integrating and using concepts is not an automatic, but a volitional process-i.e., a process which uses both new and automatized material, but which is directed volitionally. It is not an innate, but an acquired skill; it has to be learned-it is the most crucially important part of learning-and all of man's other capacities depend on how well or how badly he learns it.

This skill does not pertain to the particular content of a man's knowledge at any given age, but to the method by which he acquires and organizes knowledge-the method by which his mind deals with its content. The method programs his subconscious computer, determining how efficiently, lamely or disastrously his cognitive processes will function. The programming of a man's subconscious consists of the kind of cognitive habits he acquires; these habits const.i.tute his psycho-epistemology.

It is a child's early experiences, observations and subverbal conclusions that determine this programming. Thereafter, the interaction of content and method establishes a certain reciprocity: the method of acquiring knowledge affects its content, which affects the further development of the method, and so on.

["The Comprachicos." NI., 192.]

Most people know nothing about psycho-epistemology. They take their habitual method of thought for granted, leaving it unidentified and unquestioned. Yet this kind of ignorance can be disastrous.... Men can automatize wrong methods of thought without even knowing it. In order to achieve intellectual control, therefore, in order to enjoy the full power over your mind that volition makes possible, you must identify your psycho-epistemological methods, and correct those, if any, which are not consonant with your adult knowledge.

This is a crucial discovery of Miss Rand's-the discovery of psycho-epistemology, and of its roots, forms, and errors. Without such knowledge, men would be left at the mercy of unidentified mental habits that they hardly even suspected-habits that perhaps derived unknowingly from childhood errors that they long since had consciously renounced. Psycho-epistemology represents a whole science, a new branch of psychology.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 6.]

Men's epistemology-or, more precisely, their psycho-epistemology, their method of awareness-is the most fundamental standard by which they can be cla.s.sified. Few men are consistent in that respect: most men keep switching from one level of awareness to another, according to the circ.u.mstances or the issues involved, ranging from moments of full rationality to an almost somnambulistic stupor. But the battle of human history is fought and determined by those who are predominantly consistent, those who, for good or evil, are committed to and motivated by their chosen psycho-epistemology and its corollary view of existence.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 18; pb 21.]

While the alleged advocates of reason oppose "system-building" and haggle apologetically over concrete-bound words or mystically floating abstractions, its enemies seem to know that integration is the psycho-epistemological key to reason, that art is man's psycho-epistemological conditioner, 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.]

See also ANTI-CONCEPTUAL MENTALITY; AUTOMATIZATION; CONSCIOUSNESS; EPISTEMOLOGY; FREE WILL; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); LEARNING; PSYCHOLOGY; RATIONALITY; STYLE; SUBCONSCIOUS.