Peikoff - Reality - Idealism And Materialism As The Rejection Of Basic Axioms

Question 1

Now let us apply the principles we have been discussing to 2 outstanding falsehoods in the history of metaphysics:

Answer 1

Idealism and Materialism.

Question 2

The idealists-figures such as Plate, Plotinus, Augustine, Hegel-regard reality as …?

Answer 2

A SPIRITUAL dimension transcending and controlling the world of nature, which latter is regarded as deficient, ephemeral, imperfect-in any event, as only PARTLY REAL.

Question 3

Since “spiritual”, in fact, …?

Answer 3

Has no meaning other than “pertaining to consciousness”, the content of true reality in this view is invariably some FUNCTION or FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

==> Plato’s abstractions, Augustine’s God, Hegel’s Ideas.

==> This approach amounts to the primacy of consciousness and thus, as Ayn Rand puts it, to the advocacy of consciousness WITHOUT existence.

Question 4

In regard to epistemology, AR describes the idealists as …?

Answer 4

Mystic of spirit.

==> Mystics because they hold that knowledge (of true reality) derives NOT from sense perception or from reasoning based on it, but from an otherworldly source, such as revelations or the equivalent.

Question 5

The more sophisticated versions of idealism rest on technical analyses of the nature of percepts or concepts; they will be considered in later chapters.

The unsophisticated but popular version of idealism, which typically upholds a personalized other dimension, is …?

Answer 5

RELIGION.

==> Essential to all versions of the creed ==> THE BELIEF IN THE SUPERNATURAL.

Question 6

“Supernatural”, etymologically, means …?

Answer 6

That which is above or beyond nature.

Question 7

“Nature”, in turn, denotes …?

Answer 7

Existence viewed from a certain perspective.

==> Nature is existence regarded as a system of interconnected entities governed by law.

==> It is the universe of entities acting and interacting in accordance with their identities.

Question 8

What then is a “supernatural nature”?

Answer 8

It would have to be a form of existence BEYOND EXISTENCE.

==> A thing BEYOND ENTITIES.

==> A SOMETHING BEYOND IDENTITY.

Question 9

The idea of the “supernatural” is an assault on everything man knows about reality.

Answer 9

It is a contradiction of every essential of a rational metaphysics. It represents a rejection of the basic axioms of philosophy.

This can be illustrated by reference to any version of idealism. But let us confine the discussion here to the popular notion of God.

Question 10

Is God the creator of the universe?

Answer 10

Not if existence has primacy over consciousness.

Question 11

Is God the designer of the universe?

Answer 11

Not if A is A.

The alternative “design” is not “chance”, it is causality.

Question 12

Is God omnipotent?

Answer 12

Nothing and no one can alter the metaphysically given.

Question 13

Is God infinite?

Answer 13

“Infinite” does not mean large; it means larger than ANY specific quantity ==> OF NO SPECIFIC QUANTITY.

==> An infinite quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A. Every entity, accordingly, is finite. It is limited in the number of its qualities and in their extent. This applies to the universe as well.

==> As Aristotle was the first to observe, the concept of “infinity” denotes merely A POTENTIALITY of indefinite addition or subdivision.
Eg one can continually subdivide a line; but however many segments one has reached at a given point, there are only that many and no more.

==> The ACTUAL IS ALWAYS FINITE.

Question 14

Can God perform miracles?

Answer 14

A “miracle” does not mean merely the unusual.

==> If a woman gives birth to twins, that is unusual; if she were to give birth to elephants, that would be miracle.

==> A miracle is an action not possible to the entities involved by their nature; it would be a VIOLATION OF IDENTITY.

Question 15

Is God purely spiritual?

Answer 15

“Spiritual” means pertaining to consciousness, and consciousness is a faculty of certain living organisms of perceiving that which exists.

==> A consciousness transcending nature would be a faculty transcending organism and object.

==> So far from being all-knowing, such a thing would have NEITHER MEANS nor CONTENT OF PERCEPTION.

IT WOULD BE NON CONSCIOUS.

Question 16

The point is broader than religion. It is inherent in any advocacy of a transcendent dimension.

Any attempt to defend or define the supernatural must necessarily collapse in fallacies:

Answer 16

There is no logic that will lead one from the facts of this world TO A REALM CONTRADICTING THEM.

==> There is no concept formed by observation of nature THAT WILL SERVE TO CHARACTERIZE ITS ANTITHESIS.

==> Inference from the natural can lead only to MORE OF THE NATURAL ==> Limited, finite entities acting and interacting in accordance with their identities.

==> Such entities do not fulfill the requirements of “God” or even of “poltergeist”.

***As far as logic and reason are concerned, existence exists, and ONLY EXISTENCE EXISTS.

Question 17

Objectivism advocates reason as man’s only means of knowledge (ch.5), and, therefore, …?

Answer 17

It does not accept God or any variant of the supernatural.

==> We are a-atheist, as well as a-devilist, a-demonist, a-gremlinist.

==> We reject every “spiritual” dimension, force, Form, Idea, entity, power, or whatnot alleged to transcend existence.

==> We reject idealism. To put the point positively:

WE ACCEPT REALITY AND THAT’S ALL.

Question 18

This does not mean that Objectivists are materialists.

Materialists (Democritus, Hobbes, Marx, Skinner) …?

Answer 18

Champion nature BUT DENY THE REALITY OR EFFICACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

==> Consciousness is either a myth or a useless byproduct of brain or other emotions.

==> This amounts to the advocacy of EXISTENCE WITHOUT CONSCIOUSNESS.

==> It is the denial of man’s faculty of cognition and therefore of all knowledge.

Question 19

AR describes materialists as “mystics of muscle”:

Answer 19

Like the idealists, they reject the faculty of reason.

==> Man, they hold, is essentially a body without a mind.

==> His conclusions, accordingly, reflect not the objective methodology of reason and logic, but the blind operation of physical factors, such as atomic dances in the cerebrum, glandular squirtings, S-R conditioning, or the tools of production moving in that weird, waltzlike contortion known as the dialectic process.

Question 20

Despite their implicit mysticism, materialists typically declare that their viewpoint constitutes the only scientific or naturalistic approach to philosophy.

The belief in consciousness, they explain, implied supernaturalism.

This claim represents a capitulation to idealism:

Answer 20

For centuries the idealists maintained that the soul is a divine fragment or mystic ingredient longing to escape the “prison of the flesh”.

==> They invented the false alternative of consciousness VERSUS science.

==> The materialists simply take over this false alternative, then promote the other side of it.

==> This amounts to rejecting ARBITRARILY the possibility of a naturalistic view of consciousness.

Question 21

The FACTS, however, belie any equation of consciousness with mysticism:

Answer 21

Consciousness is an attribute of perceived entities here on earth ==> A faculty possessed under definite conditions by a certain group of living organisms.

==> It is directly observable (by introspection). It has a specific nature, including specific physical organs, and acts accordingly, ie, lawfully.

==> It has a life-sustaining function: to perceive the facts of nature and thereby enable the organisms that possess it to act successfully.

==> In all this, there is nothing UNNATURAL or SUPERNATURAL.

==> There is NO BASIS for the suggestion that consciousness is SEPARABLE from matter, LET ALONE OPPOSED TO TI, no hint of immortality, no kinship to any alleged transcendent realm.

Question 22

Like the faculty of VISION (which is one of its aspects), and like the body, the faculty of awareness is …?

Answer 22

WHOLLY THIS-WORLDLY.

Question 23

The soul, as Aristotle was the first (and so far one of the few) to understand, is …?

Answer 23

NOT man’s ticket to another reality.

==> It is a development of and within NATURE.

==> It is a biological datum open to observation, conceptualizaion, and scientific study.

Question 24

Materialists sometimes argue that consciousness is unnatural on the grounds that it cannot be perceived by extrospection, has no shape, color, or smell, and cannot be handled, weighed, or put in a test tube (all of which applies equally to the faculty of vision).

Answer 24

One may just as well argue that the eyeball is UNREAL because it cannot by perceived by introspection, does not have the qualities of a process of awareness (such as intensity or scope of integration), and cannot theorize about itself, suffer neurotic problems, or fall in love.

==> These 2 arguments are interchangeable.

==> It makes no more sense arbitrarily to legislate features of matter as the standard of existents and then deny consciousness, than to do the reverse.

==> The facts are that matter exists and so does consciousness, the faculty of perceiving it.

Question 25

Materialists sometimes regard the concept of "consciousness" as unscientific on the grounds that it cannot be defined. This overlooks the fact that ...?

Answer 25

There cannot be an infinite regress of definitions. ==> ALL definitions ultimately reduce to certain primary concepts. ==> Which can be specified ONLY OSTENSIVELY. Axiomatic concepts necessarily belong to this category.

Question 26

The concept of "matter" by contrast, is NOT an axiomatic concept and does require definition, which it does not yet have. It requires an analytical definition that will integrate the facts of energy, particle theory, and more. To provide such definition is not, however, ...?

Answer 26

The task of philosophy, which makes no specialized study of matter, but of PHYSICS. ==> As far as philosophic usage is concerned, "matter" denotes merely the objects of EXTROSPECTION or more precisely, that of which all such objects are made. ==> It this usage, the concept of "matter", like that of consciousness, can be specified only ostensively.

Question 27

There is no valid reason to reject consciousness or to struggle to reduce it to matter; not if such reduction means the attempt to define it out of existence. Even if, someday, consciousness were to be explained schientifically as a product of physical conditions, this ...?

Answer 27

Would NOT alter any observed fact. ==> It would not alter the fact that, given those conditions, the attributes and functions of consciousness are what they are. ==> Nor would it alter the fact that in many respects these attributes and functions are unique, they are different from anything observed in unconscious entities. ==> Nor would it alter the fact that one can discover the conditions of consciousness, as of anything else one seeks to know, only through the exercise of consciousness.

Question 28

The monist insistence that, despite the observed facts, reality (or man) can have only ONE constituent, is GROUNDLESS:

Answer 28

It is an example of REWRITING REALITY. ==> The materialist equation of physics with science is equally groundless. ==> Science is systematic knowledge gained by the use of reason based on observation. ==> In using reason, however, one must study each specific subject matter by the methods and techniques suited to its nature. ==> One cannot study history by the methods of chemistry, biology by the methods of economics, or psychology by the methods of physics. ==> At the dawn of philosophy, the ancient Pythagoreans in an excess of enthusiasm attempted, senselessly, to equate mathematics with cognition and to construe the universe as "numbers". The modern behaviorists, with far less excuse, commit the same error in regard to physics.

Question 29

"I want," the behaviorist says in effect, ...?

Answer 29

"To deal with entities I can weigh and measure just as the physicist does. If consciousness exists, my dream of making psychology a branch of physics is destroyed. ==> Consciousness upsets my program, my goal, my ideal. Therefore, consciousness is UNREAL. ==> In this statement, a desire is being used to wipe out a fact of reality. ==> The primacy of consciousness is being used-to deny consciousness!

Question 30

A philosophy that rejects the monism of idealism or materialism does not thereby become "dualist":

Answer 30

This term is associated with Platonic or Cartesian metaphysics. ==> It suggests the belief in 2 realities, in the mind-body opposition, and in the soul's independence of the body-all of which AR denies.

Question 31

None of the standard terms applies to the Objectivist metaphysics:

Answer 31

All the conventional positions are fundamentally flawed, and the ideal term-EXISTENTIALISM-has been preempted (by a school that advocates Das Nichts, ie NONEXISTENCE). In this situation, a new term is required, one which at least has the virtue of not calling up irrelevant associations. ==> OBJECTIVISM.