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Preface
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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ix Preface The first volume in this series, Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand’s Normative Theory, focused on aspects of Ayn Rand’s ethical theory. The present volume explores a more fundamental area of her philosophic thought: her epistemology or theory of knowledge. Rand thought of metaphysics and epistemology as the two fundamental areas of philosophy, and she grounded the rest of her philosophic system, Objectivism—including her ethics and politics—in her views on the nature of reality and of knowledge. As we will see in the opening essays in this volume, metaphysics is for her prior to epistemology, but most of the philosophic action is in epistemology. She spoke of having “a new approach to epistemology” and part of the aim of this volume is to bring that approach to the fore and to encourage reflection upon its significance. One aspect of that new approach was to give centrality in the understanding of human knowledge to the nature of concepts. Consider, for instance, that the title of a monograph she wrote on her theory of concepts is Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. In some ways the first two essays in this volume make the understanding of that choice of title their theme. Allan Gotthelf provides a general introduction to the Objectivist theory of concepts and its view of their role in human knowledge, focusing on the way the theory arises out of a rethinking of two traditional notions that have, for better or worse, shaped both presentations and criticisms of prior theories: abstraction and essence. Gotthelf explores the relation of commensurability, which Rand identifies as the basis for concepts; the process of “measurement-omission” by which she held that concepts are x ■ PREFACE abstracted; and her (nonrealist but nonsubjectivist) view of essences as epistemological rather than metaphysical. He closes with a discussion of how facts about the ontological basis of concepts and facts about the way a human consciousness must operate if it is to achieve knowledge jointly generate norms for the formation of concepts and their definitions. This serves as a lead-in to the next essay. The subject of the second essay, by Gregory Salmieri, is how Rand’s theory of concepts constitutes an introduction to an epistemology—more specifically, he considers how Rand’s theory of concepts bears on the issue of how propositional knowledge is justified. The essay begins by situating Rand’s theory of concepts (as presented by Gotthelf) in Rand’s wider conception of consciousness as an “active process” of “differentiation and integration.” In the second part of the essay, he discusses Rand’s view that the process of “conceptualization” itself includes not just the formation of concepts, but the formation of an ever growing body of propositional knowledge. In elaborating this position, Salmieri goes beyond Rand’s stated views, incorporating ideas of Leonard Peikoff’s and of his own, into a sketch of a view of judgment and inference that is based on (and arguably implicit in) Rand’s theory. The final section of the chapter discusses the norms for concepts and judgments implied by Rand’s theory, and how adherence to these norms renders concepts and conclusions justified—or, in Rand’s terms, valid. It also discusses the nature and structure of this justification, including the respects in which it is and is not a necessary condition for knowledge, and the respects in which it need and need not be self-conscious. Gotthelf and Salmieri both discuss briefly how Rand’s theory of concepts and conceptual knowledge rests on her view of sense-perception as a direct, automatic, nonconceptual (and nonpropositional) form of awareness . As such, perception constitutes a basic and unquestionable form of knowledge. In the third essay, Onkar Ghate develops the view in detail, comparing and contrasting it with another direct realist presentationalist theory, the Theory of Appearing developed by William Alston. Rand held that a proper understanding of concepts and their formation —including the process of conceptualization Salmieri describes—is crucial to understanding the growth of human knowledge and, in particular , the ongoing development of science. James G. Lennox reflects on her thought in this area, in the fourth essay, “Concepts, Context, and the Advance of Science,” showing how essentials of her theory of concepts and definition allow us to understand how concepts are able to preserve their [54.166.96.191] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:57 GMT) PREFACE ■ xi identity across significant changes in scientific theory, thereby facilitating rather than undermining the...