With Charity Toward None by William F. O'Neill

Author:William F. O'Neill [O'Neill, William F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

As is perhaps apparent, Miss Rand’s epistemology is vulnerable to attack on at least seven counts.

1) She sets up an ostensibly objective epistemology, but she does so on a totally subjective and, ultimately, mystical basis. Her axiomatic concepts are, as she herself admits, beyond proof. They are merely true, because they are true.

2) She violates her own theory of axiomatic truth. She states that “all definitions are contextual.”125 She defines “axiomatic concepts” as true independent of any particular context and therefore beyond specification in terms of attributes or characteristics. She then proceeds to “define” the axiomatic concept of “consciousness” as possessing two attributes: content and action. She compounds this inconsistency by going on to suggest that all axiomatic concepts need to be identified in conceptual form. The question is, of course, if they cannot be defined in the first place, how can they be conceptualized in explicit form?

3) Related to this last point is Miss Rand’s apparent confusion with respect to the relationship between concepts and communication. In a general sense, she is quite correct in holding that many concepts precede symbolic definitions. In a more specific sense, however, she seems to be guilty of making several errors. To begin with, she seems to overlook the fact that definitions (explicit concepts) also function as a type of knowledge in the development of subsequent concepts. In addition, she seems to be largely oblivious to the fact that cognition itself is largely a process of internal communication which is mediated by symbols and that the relationship between cognition and communication is largely reciprocal and interaffecting.

4) In a similar respect, Miss Rand appears to believe—in opposition to overwhelming scientific and psychological evidence to the contrary-that basic abstract concepts (such as “existence” and “consciousness”) evolve prior to, and as a condition for, specific content knowledge. In contrast to Miss Rand’s description of the learning process, evidence indicates that the earliest “axiomatic concepts,” like all other concepts, are actually generalizations from quite specific types of contextual experience. The child’s earliest behavior gives rise to his first experience which, in turn, provides the basis necessary for his first knowledge. The common elements inherent within his earliest pre-rational experiences provide the basis for his earliest generalizations and abstractions. The first deductive principles are, in short, the product, not of self-evident intuition, as Miss Rand seems to believe, but of pre-cognitive behavioral induction derived by means of motor-emotional conditioning in the earliest years.

5) Still another criticism which can be leveled against Miss Rand’s epistemology is that it is basically both pre-scientific and anti-psychological. Miss Rand’s epistemology (which is the basis for her psychological theories) is rooted in metaphysics. Children do not initially think by formal logic, following syllogistic patterns. In a similar sense, cognition does not guide evaluation. The opposite is true.

The reason Miss Rand feels obligated to ground her beliefs in metaphysics is that they do not make sense in terms of contemporary psychology. The child’s first knowledge is not rational knowledge at all but emotional knowledge. Goal-seeking precedes evaluation, and evaluation precedes significant cognition.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.