The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 7

Communication. Reason is the only means of communication among men, and an objectively perceivable reality is their only common frame of reference; when these are invalidated (i.e., held to be irrelevant) in the field of morality, force becomes men's only way of dealing with one another.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 22.]

Concepts and, therefore, language are primarily a tool of cognition-not of communication, as is usually a.s.sumed. Communication is merely the consequence, not the cause nor the primary purpose of concept-formation-a crucial consequence, of invaluable importance to men, but still only a consequence. Cognition precedes communication; the necessary precondition of communication is that one have something to communicate. (This is true even of communication among animals, or of communication by grunts and growls among inarticulate men, let alone of communication by means of so complex and exacting a tool as language.) [ITOE, 92.].

See also CONCEPTS; LANGUAGE; PHYSICAL FORCE; REASON.

Communism. When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State, I perceived that this was the essential issue, that this principle was evil, and that it could lead to nothing but evil, regardless of any methods, details, decrees, policies, promises and pious plat.i.tudes. This was the reason for my opposition to Communism then -and it is my reason now. I am still a little astonished, at times, that too many adult Americans do not understand the nature of the fight against Communism as clearly as I understood it at the age of twelve: they continue to believe that only Communist methods are evil, while Communist ideals are n.o.ble. All the victories of Communism since the year 1917 are due to that particular belief among the men who are still free.

["Foreword," WTL, vii.]

Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and the results are the same.

["Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," PWNI, 85; pb 70.]

The Communists' chief-purpose is to destroy every form of independence-independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or an independent man. Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state.

["Screen Guide for Americans," Plain Talk, Nov. 1947, 41.]

It is the Communists' intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. It is the Communists' aim to discourage all personal effort and to drive men into a hopeless, dispirited, gray herd of robots who have lost all personal ambition, who are easy to rule, willing to obey and willing to exist in selfless servitude to the State.

[Ibid., 39.]

If America perishes, it will perish by intellectual default. There is no diabolical conspiracy to destroy it: no conspiracy could be big enough and strong enough.... As to the communist conspirators in the service of Soviet Russia, they are the best ill.u.s.tration of victory by default: their successes are handed to them by the concessions of their victims.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 52; pb 46.]

When men share the same basic premise, it is the most consistent ones who win. So long as men accept the altruist morality, they will not be able to stop the advance of communism. The altruist morality is Soviet Russia's best and only weapon.

["Conservatism: An Obituary," CUI, 196.]

See also COLLECTIVISM; DICTATORSHIP; EGALITARIANISM; FASCISM and COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM; HUMAN RIGHTS and PROPERTY RIGHTS; "McCARTHYISM"; POLYLOGISM; PROPERTY RIGHTS; SOCIALISM; SOVIET RUSSIA; STATISM.

Compa.s.sion. I regard compa.s.sion as proper only toward those who are innocent victims, but not toward those who are morally guilty. If one feels compa.s.sion for the victims of a concentration camp, one cannot feel it for the torturers. If one does feel compa.s.sion for the torturers, it is an act of moral treason toward the victims.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 10.]

See also ALTRUISM; JUSTICE; MERCY; PITY.

Compet.i.tion. Compet.i.tion is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

["The Moratorium on Brains," ARI., 1,2,4.]

A compet.i.tion presupposes some basic principles held in common by all the compet.i.tors, such as the rules of the game in athletics, or the functions of the free market in business.

["Apollo 11," TO, Sept. 1969, 9.]

The only actual factor required for the existence of free compet.i.tion is: the unhampered, un.o.bstructed operation of the mechanism of a free market. The only action which a government can take to protect free compet.i.tion is: Laissez-faire!-which, in free translation, means: Hands off! But the ant.i.trust laws established exactly opposite conditions-and achieved the exact opposite of the results they had been intended to achieve.

There is no way to legislate compet.i.tion; there are no standards by which one could define who should compete with whom, how many compet.i.tors should exist in any given field, what should be their relative strength or their so-called "relevant markets," what prices they should charge, what methods of compet.i.tion are "fair" or "unfair." None of these can be answered, because these precisely are the questions that can be answered only by the mechanism of a free market.

["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CUI, 54.]

The concept of free compet.i.tion enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms. It means: forcing people to be free at the point of a gun. It means: protecting people's freedom by the arbitrary rule of unanswerable bureaucratic edicts.

[Ibid., 52.]

Compet.i.tion, properly so-called, rests on the activity of separate, independent individuals owning and exchanging private property in the pursuit of their self-interest. It arises when two or more such individuals become rivals for the same trade.

[George Reisman, "Platonic Compet.i.tion," TO, Aug. 1968, 9.]

The compet.i.tion which takes place under capitalism acts to regulate prices simply in accordance with the full costs of production and with the requirements of earning a rate of profit. It does not act to drive prices to the level of "marginal costs" or to the point where they reflect a "scarcity" of capacity.

[Ibid., 11.]

The compet.i.tor who cuts his price is fully aware of the impact on other compet.i.tors and that they will try to match his price. He acts in the knowledge that some of them will not he able to afford the cut, while he is, and that he will eventually pick up their business. He is able to afford the cut when and if his productive efficiency is greater than theirs, which lowers his costs to a level they cannot match.... Thus price compet.i.tion, under capitalism, is the result of a contest of efficiency, competence, ability.

[Ibid., Sept. 1968, 9.]

"Compet.i.tion" is an active, not a pa.s.sive, noun. It applies to the ent.i.te sphere of economic activity, not merely to production, but also to trade; it implies the necessity of taking action to affect the conditions of the market in one's own favor.

The error of the nineteenth-century observers was that they restricted a wide abstraction-compet.i.tion-to a narrow set of particulars, to the "pa.s.sive" compet.i.tion projected by their own interpretation of cla.s.sical economics. As a result, they concluded that the alleged "failure" of this fict.i.tious "pa.s.sive compet.i.tion" negated the entire theoretical structure of cla.s.sical economics, including the demonstration of the fact that laissez-faire is the most efficient and productive of all possible economic systems. They concluded that a free market, by its nature, leads to its own destruction-and they came to the grotesque contradiction of attempting to preserve the freedom of the market by government controls, i.e., to preserve the benefits of laissez-faire by abrogating it.

[Alan Greenspan, "Ant.i.trust," CUI, 67.]

See also ANt.i.tRUST LAWS; CAPITALISM; COMPROMISE; FREE MARKET; FREEDOM; MONOPOLY; PRODUCTlVENESS.

Compromise. A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal.

["Doesn't Life Require Compromise?" VOS, 85; pb 68.]

There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

[" 'Extremism,' or The Art of Smearing," CUI, 182.]

It is only in regard to concretes or particulars, implementing a mutually accepted basic principle, that one may compromise. For instance, one may bargain with a buyer over the price one wants to receive for one's product, and agree on a sum somewhere between one's demand and his offer. The mutually accepted basic principle, in such case, is the principle of trade, namely: that the buyer must pay the seller for his product. But if one wanted to be paid and the alleged buyer wanted to obtain one's product for nothing, no compromise, agreement or discussion would be possible, only the total surrender of one or the other.

There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one's silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender-the recognition of his right to one's property.

["Doesn't Life Require Compromise?" VOS, 85; pb 68.]

Contrary to the fanatical belief of its advocates, compromise [on basic principles] does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody; it does not lead to general fulfillment, but to general frustration; those who try to be all things to all men, end up by not being anything to anyone. And more: the partial victory of an unjust claim, encourages the claimant to try further; the partial defeat of a just claim, discourages and paralyzes the victim.

["The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion,' " CUI, 255.]

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube....

When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it's picked up by scoundrels-and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.

[GS, FNI, 217; pb 173.]

The three rules listed below are by no means exhaustive; they are merely the first leads to the understanding of a vast subject.

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.]

See also ABSOLUTES; APPEAs.e.m.e.nT; COOPERATION; INTEGRITY; JUSTICE; MORAL COWARDICE; MORAL JUDGMENT; PRAGMATISM; PRINCIPLES.

Concept-Formation. According to Objectivism, concepts "represent cla.s.sifications of observed existents according to their relationships to other observed existents." (Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology; all further quotations in this section, unless otherwise identified, are from this work.) To form a concept, one mentally isolates a group of concretes (of distinct perceptual units), on the basis of observed similarities which distinguish them from all other known concretes (similarity is "the relationship between two or more existents which possess the same characteristic(s), but in different measure or degree"); then, by a process of omitting the particular measurements of these concretes, one integrates them into a single new mental unit: the concept, which subsumes all concretes of this kind (a potentially unlimited number). The integration is completed and retained by the selection of a perceptual symbol (a word) to designate it. "A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted."

[Leonard Peikoff, "The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," ITOE, 131.]

Bear firmly in mind that the term "measurements omitted" does not mean, in this context, that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means that measurements exist, but are not specified. That measurements must exist is an essential part of the process. The principle is: the relevant measurements must exist in some quant.i.ty, but may exist in any quant.i.ty.

[ITOE, 14.].

Let us now examine the process of forming the simplest concept, the concept of a single attribute (chronologically, this is not the first concept that a child would grasp; but it is the simplest one epistemologically)-for instance, the concept "length." If a child considers a match, a pencil and a stick, he observes that length is the attribute they have in common, but their specific lengths differ. The difference is one of measurement. In order to form the concept "length," the child's mind retains the attribute and omits its particular measurements. Or, more precisely, if the process were identified in words, it would consist of the following: "Length must exist in some quant.i.ty, but may exist in any quant.i.ty. I shall identify as 'length' that attribute of any existent possessing it which can be quant.i.tatively related to a unit of length, without specifying the quant.i.ty."

The child does not think in such words (he has, as yet, no knowledge of words), but that is the nature of the process which his mind performs wordlessly. And that is the principle which his mind follows, when, having grasped the concept "length" by observing the three objects, he uses it to identify the attribute of length in a piece of string, a ribbon, a belt, a corridor or a street.

The same principle directs the process of forming concepts of ent.i.ties -for instance, the concept "table." The child's mind isolates two or more tables from other objects, by focusing on their distinctive characteristic: their shape. He observes that their shapes vary, but have one characteristic in common: a Hat, level surface and support(s). He forms the concept "table" by retaining that characteristic and omitting all particular measurements, not only the measurements of the shape, but of all the other characteristics of tables (many of which he is not aware of at the time).

[Ibid., 12.]

Observe the multiple role of measurements in the process of concept-formation, in both of its two essential parts: differentiation and integration. Concepts cannot be formed at random. All concepts are formed by first differentiating two or more existents from other existents. All conceptual differentiations are made in terms of commensurable characteristics (i.e., characteristics possessing a common unit of measurement). No concept could be formed, for instance, by attempting to distinguish long objects from green objects. Incommensurable characteristics cannot be integrated into one unit.

Tables, for instance, are first differentiated from chairs, beds and other objects by means of the characteristic of shape, which is an attribute possessed by all the objects involved. Then, their particular kind of shape is set as the distinguishing characteristic of tables-i.e., a certain category of geometrical measurements of shape is specified. Then, within that category, the particular measurements of individual table-shapes are omitted.

Please note the fact that a given shape represents a certain category or set of geometrical measurements. Shape is an attribute; differences of shape-whether cubes, spheres, cones or any complex combinations -are a matter of differing measurements; any shape can be reduced to or expressed by a set of figures in terms of linear measurement. When, in the process of concept-formation, man observes that shape is a commensurable characteristic of certain objects, he does not have to measure all the shapes involved nor even to know how to measure them; he merely has to observe the element of similarity.

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 philosophy and of science to identify that fact.

[Ibid., 16.]

A commensurable characteristic (such as shape in the case of tables, or hue in the case of colors) is an essential element in the process of concept-formation. I shall designate it as the "Conceptual Common Denominator" and define it as "The characteristic(s) reducible to a unit of measurement, by means of which man differentiates two or more existents from other existents possessing it."

The distinguishing characteristic(s) of a concept represents a specitied category of measurements within the "Conceptual Common Denominator" involved.

New concepts can be formed by integrating earlier-formed concepts into wider categories, or by subdividing them into narrower categories (a process which we shall discuss later). But all concepts are ultimately reducible to their base in perceptual ent.i.ties, which are the base (the given) of man's cognitive development.

[Ibid., 18.]

When concepts are integrated into a wider one, the new concept includes all the characteristics of its const.i.tuent units; but their distinguishing characteristics are regarded as omitted measurements, and one of their common characteristics determines the distinguishing characteristic of the new concept: the one representing their "Conceptual Common Denominator" with the existents from which they are being differentiated.

When a concept is subdivided into narrower ones, its distinguishing characteristic is taken as their "Conceptual Common Denominator"-and is given a narrower range of specified measurements or is combined with an additional characteristic(s), to form the individual distinguishing characteristics of the new concepts.

[Ibid., 30.]

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).

[Ibid., 40.]

Concepts are not and cannot be formed in a vacuum; they are formed in a context; the process of conceptualization consists of observing the differences and similarities of the existents within the field of one's awareness (and organizing them into concepts accordingly). From a child's grasp of the simplest concept integrating a group of perceptually given concretes, to a scientist's grasp of the most complex abstractions integrating long conceptual chains-alt conceptualization is a contextual process; the context is the entire field of a mind's awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development.

This does not mean that conceptualization is a subjective process or that the content of concepts depends on an individual's subjective (i.e., arbitrary) choice. The only issue open to an individual's choice in this matter is how much knowledge he will seek to acquire and, consequently, what conceptual complexity he will be able to reach. But so long as and to the extent that his mind deals with concepts (as distinguished from memorized sounds and floating abstractions), the content of his concepts is determined and dictated by the cognitive content of his mind, i.e., by his grasp of the facts of reality.

[Ibid., 55.]

Objectivity begins with the realization that man (including his every attribute and faculty, including his consciousness) is an ent.i.ty of a specific nature who must act accordingly; that there is no escape from the law of ident.i.ty, neither in the universe with which he deals nor in the working of his own consciousness, and if he is to acquire knowledge of the first, he must discover the proper method of using the second; that there is no room for the arbitrary in any activity of man, least of all in his method of cognition-and just as he has learned to be guided by objective criteria in making his physical tools, so he must be guided by objective criteria in forming his tools of cognition: his concepts.

Just as man's physical existence was liberated when he grasped the principle that "nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed," so his consciousness will be liberated when he grasps that nature, to be apprehended, must be obeyed-that the rules of cognition must be derived from the nature of existence and the nature, the ident.i.ty, of his cognitive faculty.

[Ibid., 110.]

Man's sense organs function automatically; man's brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically; but the process of integrating percepts into concepts-the process of abstraction and of concept-formation-is not automatic.

The process of concept-formation does not consist merely of grasping a few simple abstractions, such as "chair," "table," "hot," "cold," and of learning to speak. It consists of a method of using one's consciousness, best designated by the term "conceptualizing." It is not a pa.s.sive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one's impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one's perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one's knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 12; pb 20.]

See also ABSTRACTION (PROCESS of); ABSTRACTIONS and CONCRETES; CONCEPTUAL COMMON DENOMINATOR; CONCEPTS; DEFINITIONS; GENUS and SPECIES; INTEGRATlON (MENTAL); LANGUAGE; MEASUREMENT; UNIT; WORDS.

Concepts. A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by a specific definition. By organizing his perceptual material into concepts, and his concepts into wider and still wider concepts, man is able to grasp and retain, to identify and integrate an unlimited amount of knowledge, a knowledge extending beyond the immediate concretes of any given, immediate moment.

In any given moment, concepts enable man to hold in the focus of his conscious awareness much more than his purely perceptual capacity would permit. The range of man's perceptual awareness-the number of percepts he can deal with at any one time-is limited. He may be able to visualize four or five units-as, for instance, five trees. He cannot visualize a hundred trees or a distance of ten light-years. It is only his conceptual faculty that makes it possible for him to deal with knowledge of that kind.

Man retains his concepts by means of language. With the exception of proper names, every word we use is a concept that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a certain kind. A concept is like a mathematical series of specifically defined units, going off in both directions, open at both ends and including all units of that particular kind. For instance, the concept "man" includes all men who live at present, who have ever lived or will ever live-a number of men so great that one would not be able to perceive them all visually, let alone to study them or discover anything about them.

["The Psycho-Epistemology of Art," RM, 19; pb 17.]

To what precisely do we refer when we designate three persons as "men"? We refer to the fact that they are living beings who possess the same characteristic distinguishing them from all other living species: a rational faculty-though the specific measurements of their distinguishing characteristic qua men, as well as of all their other characteristics qua living beings, are different. (As living beings of a certain kind, they possess innumerable characteristics in common: the same shape, the same range of size, the same facial features, the same vital organs, the same fingerprints, etc., and all these characteristics differ only in their measurements.) [ITOE, 21.].

A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted.

[Ibid., 15.]

The basic principle of concept-formation (which states that the omitted measurements must exist in some quant.i.ty, but may exist in any quant.i.ty) is the equivalent of the basic principle of algebra, which states that algebraic symbols must be given some numerical value, but may be given any value. In this sense and respect, perceptual awareness is the arithmetic, but conceptual awareness is the algebra of cognition.

[Ibid., 22.]

None of [the traditional theories of concepts] regards concepts as objective, i.e., as neither revealed nor invented, but as produced by man's consciousness in accordance with the facts of reality, as mental integrations of factual data computed by man-as the products of a cognitive method of cla.s.sification whose processes must be performed by man, but whose content is dictated by reality.

[Ibid., 71.]