Peikoff - Sense Perception And Volition - Consciousness As Possessing Identity Flashcards
(18 cards)
Implicit in the foregoing is a principle essential to the validation of the senses and, indeed to all epistemology:
AR’s crucial principle that consciousness has IDENTITY.
EVERY existent is bound by the laws of identity and causality. This applies not only to the physical world, but also …?
To consciousness.
==> Consciousness, any consciousness, of any species, is what it is.
==> It is LIMITED, FINITE, LAWFUL.
==> It is a faculty with a nature, which includes specific instrumentalities that enable it to achieve awareness.
***It is SOMETHING that has to grasp its objects SOMEHOW.
The fact that consciousness has identity is self-evident.
It is an instance of the law of identity.
Objectivism stands alone in accepting the fact’s full meaning and implications.
All the standard attacks on the senses-and wider: all the modern, Kant-inspired attacks on human cognition as such- begin with the opposite premise:
They begin with the premise that consciousness SHOULD NOT have identity and conclude that, since it does, consciousness is INVALID.
**The naive realists accept the same premise, but hold that it poses no problem. Consciousness, they say, IS a characterless “mirror” ie A THING WITHOUT IDENTITY.
In regard to the senses, the standard argument, long a staple of skeptics, has already been indicated:
“A certain object looks red or sounds or feels solid, but that is partly because of the nature of human eyes, ears, or touch. Therefore, we are cut off from the external world. We do not perceive reality as it really is, BUT ONLY REALITY AS IT APPEARS TO MAN.”
Here is the same argument as presented by Kantians, in regard to the conceptual faculty:
“Certain abstract conclusions are incontestable to us, but that is partly because of the nature of the human mind. If we had a different sort of mind, with a different sort of conceptual apparatus, our idea of truth and reality would be different.
==> Human knowledge, therefore, is ONLY HUMAN. IT IS SUBJECTIVE. IT DOES NOT APPLY TO THINGS IN THEMSELVES.”
Here is the argument for a 3rd time, as applied to logic:
“Even the most meticulous proof depends on our sense of what is logical, which must depend in part on the kind of mental constitution we have.
==> THE REAL TRUTH ON ANY QUESTION IS, therefore, UNKNOWABLE.
==> To know it, we would have to CONTACT REALITY DIRECTLY, WITHOUT RELYING ON OUR OWN LOGICAL MAKEUP.
==> WE WOULD HAVE TO JUMP OUTSIDE OF OUR OWN NATURE, WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE.”
We cannot escape the limitations of a human consciousness, the argument observes.
We cannot escape our dependence on human senses, human concepts, human logic, the human brain…
We cannot shed human identity.
Therefore, the argument concludes, we CANNOT GAIN KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY.
==> In other words, our consciousness is SOMETHING, it has specific MEANS AND FORMS of cognition. Therefore, it is DISQUALIFIED as a faculty of cognition.
This argument is not confined to human consciousness.
It is an attack on ALL consciousness, human, animal, divine, or otherwise.
What sort of consciousness CAN perceive reality, in the Kantian, anti-identity approach?
A consciousness NOT limited by any means of cognition.
==> A consciousness which perceives no-how. A consciousness which is not of THIS kind as against that. A consciousness which is NOTHING IN PARTICULAR ==> WHICH IS NOTHING ==> WHICH DOES NOT EXIST.
THIS is the ideal of the Kantian argument and the standard it uses to measure cognitive validity:
The standard is NOT human consciousness or even an invented consciousness claimed to be superior to man’s, BUT A ZERO, A VACUUM, A NULLITY-A NON-ANYTHING.
In this view, identity-the essence of existence- …?
INVALIDATES CONSCIOUSNESS. EVERY KIND OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
==> A MEANS OF KNOWLEDGE MAKES KNOWLEDGE IMPOSSIBLE.
==> Man is blind, because he has eyes-dead, because he has ears-deluded, because he has a mind-and the things he perceives do not exist, BECAUSE he perceives them.
There is no locution such as “reality as it really is”:
The phrase is a redundancy.
THERE IS NO “REALITY AS IT REALLY ISN’T”.
==> The world men perceive is NOT MERELY “REALITY AS IT APPEARS”.
==> There is no difference in this context between what it appears and what is real.
==> IT IS REALITY that appears to ANY consciousness-through the use of its means of cognition.
==> TO DENY THIS IS TO SUCCUMB TO THE NOTION THAT GRASPING AN OBJECT SOMEHOW, MEANS NOT GRASPING IT.
Nor do Objectivists speak of “things in themselves” which Kantians contrast to “things in relation to consciousness”:
The very terminology insinuates the notion that consciousness, BY THE MERE FACT OF EXISTING, IS AN AGENT OF DISTORTION.
For the same reason, Objectivists reject the key skeptic claim:
That man perceives not reality, but ONLY ITS EFFECTS on his cognitive faculty.
==> Man perceives reality DIRECTLY, not some kind of effects DIFFERENT FROM IT.
==> He perceives reality BY MEANS OF its effects on his organs of perception.
==> Nor can one reply that man’s perception of reality, since it is mediated by the senses, is ONLY “INDIRECT”.
==> What then would “DIRECT PERCEPTION” denote??
==> It would have to denote a grasp of reality attained WITHOUT BENEFIT OF ANY MEANS.
AR rejects all these errors, because she rejects their root:
She begins not by bewailing the nature of human consciousness, but by insisting on it.
==> The fact that man’s cognitive faculties have a nature does not invalidates them ==> IT IS WHAT MAKES THEM POSSIBLE.
==> Identity is NOT the disqualifier of consciousness, BUT ITS PRECONDITION.
==> This is the base from which epistemology must proceed; it is the principle by reference to which all standards of cognition must be defined.
Every process of knowledge involved 2 crucial elements:
- The object of cognition.
- The means of cognition.
==> WHAT do I know? + HOW do I know it?.
==> The object (which is studied by the special senses) is always some aspect of reality. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO KNOW.
==> The means (which is studied by epistemology) pertains to the kind of consciousness and determines the form of cognition.
The start of a proper epistemology lies in recognizing that …?
There can be NO CONFLICT BETWEEN THESE ELEMENTS.
==> Contrary to the skeptics of history ==> The fact of a means cannot be used to deny that the object of cognition is reality.
==> Contrary to the mystics ==> The fact that the object is reality cannot be used to deny that we know it by a specific, HUMAN means.
***THE “HOW” CANNOT BE USED TO NEGATE THE “WHAT”, or the “WHAT” the “HOW”.
==> NOT IF ONE UNDERSTANDS THAT A IS A AND THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS CONSCIOUSNESS.
