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Title: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand, Harry Binswanger, Leonard Peikoff ISBN: 0-452-01030-6 Publisher: Meridian Books Pub. Date: December, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (39 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Ayn Rand at Her Best
Comment: This book has three sections. The first is Ayn Rand's new theory of concepts, which is 87 pages long. A concept is something like "red" or "justice". You'll never find an object lying on the ground that is red or justice all by itself, so where do these ideas come from? Do we just make them up? These are the questions Ayn Rand explores and offers a unique solution to. Far from being useless philosophical babbling, Rand goes on to show how important it is to form concepts properly, as they are our way of understanding the world.
The next section, by Leonard Peikoff, is a discussion of what is called the "analytic-synthetic dichotomy". As its name suggests, the dichotomy is what you expect from modern philosophy: very complicated and totally irrelevant to the way real people think. Peikoff shows how it is equally useless philosophically, and he does this without delving into obscure techno-babble while still making the argument clear and illustrative. This is accomplished in a neat 34 pages.
My favorite section of the book is the last 171 pages, which presents the highlights of a workshop held by Ayn Rand to discuss the first section of the work. Here you can find Ayn Rand engaged in philosophic discussion with other intellectuals of her time, clarifying points and coming up with new examples. It is inspiring to see how much thought must have gone into this work, for her to be able to discuss even the finest points at length in conversation. While the first section may be only 87 pages, there is a tremendous effort and understanding behind every sentence in those pages.
A word of warning, though. This book is unlike anything else published by Rand, as it deals with formal philosophy, not current events or the lives of fictional heroes. If you are familiar with the 60-page speech in Atlas Shrugged, it's like that, but without the excitement and emotion evoked by the plot.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Book
Comment: This book is precisely what the title states. It is an "introduction" and as such is the gateway to Rand's theory of knowledge by way of her theory of concepts. Human knowledge is conceptual knowledge and Rand validates the objectivity of concepts by explaining, from the ground up, the method by which they are formed in the mind. The points she makes which seem misguided and arbitrary are cleared up in subsequent re-readings as long as the reader keeps in mind that once she defines a term, she does not deviate from its meaning. For most of us who are generally unsure about specific definitions of terms and rely on our feelings to give meaning to the words we read, discipline is required. For those who start with an axe to grind based on their disagreements with Rand's political philosophy, deliberate mis-interpretations of terms generally abound (as can be seen in most of the on-line reviews.) One such example is the damning of Rand over her claim to have solved the problem of "universals". In this context, this problem refers to the issue of the relationship between concepts and their perceptual referents; the HISTORICAL problem of universals. It is unfortunately too common to find those who are willing to drop this necessary context and argue against the Objectivist claim based on various meanings of the term universal, few of which are relevant to the issue at hand.
It is amusing to read disagreements of the Objectivist theory of concepts which are addressed and cleared up in the appendix. The appendix of the second edition of I to OE really is amazing. It is simply transcripts of round table discussions of professors who had read the original text presenting their questions and objections on finer points of epistemology. Rand was, apparently, at her intellectual pinnacle at this point, and any potentially hazy points are clarified beyond question.
The criticism that this is not presented in as scholarly a way as an epistemological monograph should be has its merits. The preface clearly states that main work is a reprint of a series of articles in which Rand presented her theory of concept formation. I certainly would have preferred a more scholastic presentation and a deeper exploration of the background of certain ideas, but this was Rand's style. She did not "write down" to her readers and her writing requires objective truth seekers to do their own research. I have, on multiple occasions, encountered the criticism that a reader was left wondering what Bertrand Russell was attempting to "perpetrate" in his theory of numbers. After encountering this passage I went to a philosophy text and read a passage describing Russell's theory of numbers as an attempt to create a purely logical language which would allow one to understand numbers without relating them to their perceptual referents. Since Rand demonstrates that concepts are valid within the context of the totality of human consciousness, and that abstractions must be derived primarily from their perceptual referents (numbers, specifically, are covered) which form their fundamental context, the dismissal of Russell stands.
For those who are familiar with Rand only from Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, this is a fascinating opportunity to understand the underlying support of a novelist's reasoning process, rarely made this explicit.
Rating: 2
Summary: Needs a lot more work
Comment: If the assertions in this book were validated from an empirical/scientific standpoint, it would be a major advance in psychology and neuroscience. The author of this book though did not intend to produce a scientific work, but instead a philosophical one, and as in all such works, one is free to speculate, with the only side constraint being that its logic must be cohesive (although some modern works relax even this restriction). The claims that the author makes in this book are very extreme, considering the paucity of scientific evidence and complete lack of references.
The author's intent was to summarize the "Objectivist theory of concepts" as a prelude to a future book on Objectivism, the latter name the author has given to her philosophy. Since it is a summary, and since it is philosophy (which usually eschews any need for empirical validation), one perhaps should not expect the details of all the assertions made in the book. The problem with this work though is that the author implicitly draws on fields such as child psychology and neuroscience, but no citations are given and therefore its credibility is suspect.
Some examples of the parts in the book that need reworking include: 1. The author's assertion that the human mathematical and conceptual abilities develop simultaneously. Not only is the author assuming that these abilities are indeed different, she offers no studies to support her assertion concerning the time development of these abilities in a child. What studies influenced her thinking on these matters? It is doubtful that the author has conducted the careful experimental work needed to reach her conclusions. Considering the amount of research that has been done in child and cognitive development in the past fifty years, this research involving many individuals, the author's claims on the cognitive development of a child are most astounding. 2. In her discussion on concept formation, the author explains the process, as she sees it, of the forming of the simplest concept, the concept of a single attribute. She does not define or have a criterion for "simplicity" of a concept, but as an example gives the concept of "length" as being one of the simplest. For the author, the child forms the concept "length" by observing objects of different length, noting that the length is the attribute they have in common, but the actual measurements are omitted. The author does not give any empirical evidence supporting this claim of concept formation, and she asserts that this process does not involve words. The lack of words to form concepts is not by itself troubling, but the lack of evidence to support both of these claims is. Again, there are many researchers who are very curious about the processes of learning and cognition, and much work in these areas has been done. The author's claims are extraordinary in this regard, and require much more substantiation if they are to be accepted from a scientific standpoint. 3. It is very apparent throughout the book that the author's knowledge of mathematics is very limited, and her limitations here cause problems in many of the discussions in the book. For example, when she describes the process of a child forming the concept of "table", she claims that it is the "shape" of the tables that forms the distinguishing characteristic. However, "shape" is a more complicated concept than the author realizes from a mathematical standpoint. A classification of objects by "shape" would not necessarily be the rigid geometric one which she clearly wants to use in the book. As another example, she discusses integral calculus as being a method for calculating the area of circles. It does this of course, but this is perhaps its most elementary application, and it goes far beyond this in its ramifications. The author's case for the importance of mathematics in her theory of concept formation would be much more credible if she would have obtained a more in-depth understanding of modern mathematics. 4. In the book the terms "complexity" and "random" are used very loosely. Since these notions are important in her epistemology, and of course very important from the standpoint of modern computer science and complexity theory, they need more careful consideration in this book. Indeed, her assertion that as a child's knowledge grows the complexity of the definitions of his concepts increases may if taken at face value completely invalidate her theory of concept formation. This is because some theories of concept formation that are based on knowledge trees can run into the problem of a "combinatorial explosion" or if based on first order logic may be "undecidable". The author's definition of complexity is completely absent though, and so one cannot analyze her works in the context of modern notions of complexity. Her notion of randomness too is left undefined, but she makes use of the notion frequently in the book, as for example in her assertion that concepts cannot be formed "at random". But randomness is a notion that requires careful elucidation in many different fields of endeavor, and especially in the field of neuroscience, the latter of which is also very concerned with developing a successful theory of concept formation.
It is readily apparent while reading the book that the author was completely isolated from the mathematical and scientific community while the book was being written. The lack of references, the extraordinary claims made, and the overall tone of the book make it almost useless to those readers who are actively involved in developing theories of cognitive development or those who are curious about such developments. If the book had included what was needed, its size would be many times over what it is now. Its status as a book on epistemology is typical of philosophical treatises: lots of speculation and arm-chair reasoning, but little or no empirical content.
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Title: Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism by Ayn Rand ISBN: 0451163931 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: July, 1989 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand ISBN: 0451138937 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: April, 1985 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand ISBN: 0451147952 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: July, 1986 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand ISBN: 0451163087 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: March, 1984 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand ISBN: 0451149165 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: June, 1975 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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