An Objectivist dictionary
Some people believe that words are tools to manipulate their social
environment. Some believe that words ARE reality. I believe that words are
tools used to think more clearly about reality and to communicate my
thoughts to other people.
Many of the items here are not, strictly speaking, definitions--but they
do provide some useful insight into the meanings of the concepts.
REFERENCES
AS :Atlas Shrugged (hardback).
Basic :Basic Principles of Objectivism lectures
DK :The cogitations of David King.
DS :The Disowned Self (hardback).
FNI :For the New Intellectual (paperback).
HPD :How You Can Profit From the Coming Devaluation (hardback - index)
IOE :Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (the original green
book).
OPAR :Objectivism:The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff
PRL :The Psychology of Romantic Love (hardback).
PSE :The Psychology of Self-Esteem (hardback - index)
SEM :Recordings of seminars held by Nathaniel Branden about l970
Think :Principles of Efficient Thinking lectures
VOS :The Virtue of Selfishness (hardback - index)
WAR :Who Is Ayn Rand (paperback).
YY/Mmm/pp (e.g. 67/May/11) :The Objectivist Newsletter or The Objectivist
MmmYY-pp (e.g. Apr87-10) :The Objectivist Forum
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* ABSURD That which denies the axiom of Identity. That which contradicts
itself. That which contravenes an ostensive concept.
* ACHIEVEMENT The creation of values.
* ADMIRATION PSE-129 The pleasure a man takes in the character and
achievements of another human being.
* ALIENATION Avoid unpleasantness and then avoid the fact that you are
avoiding. AS-833 They pretend to themselves that they are not pretending.
* ALTRUISM 62/Jul/27 Man must make the welfare of others his primary
concern and must place their interests above his own; he has no right to
exist for his own sake.
Notice that this phenomenon has two sides: one, expressed above, requires
that YOU must live for the sake of others. The other side requires that
OTHERS must live for your sake.
* ANARCHO-CAPITALISM is a synonym for anarchism. It should be used when
your audience might otherwise be confused by the spoutings of the type of
socialists (usually communists) who for some reason masquerade as
anarchists. We need to clarify that we have nothing in common with them.
* ANGER is somewhat more complex an emotion than fear, because in most
cases it also includes the emotions of hurt and disappointment, with their
underlying evaluations of: "This injustice is causing me pain because I
expected more from this person; I respected him and he is doing an unjust
thing."
* ANXIETY 67/Jan/12 Response to the threatened loss of a value. 66/Nov/7
A state of dread experienced in the absence of any actual threat. What you
experience when your body prepares for a challenge that is not here in
reality. If the challenge actually exists your excitement and energy can
flow into the activity of coping with the challenge. Since the challenge
only exists in fantasy there is nothing you can actually do and all your
energy and excitement gushes out in trembling and other symptoms of anxiety.
This also happens if the challenge is present in reality but you don't dare
attempt it yet.
Anxiety is a complex emotion; it feels similar to fear, but it differs
from fear in that the latter is a response to a concrete which one
experiences as threatening. In contrast, anxiety is free-floating fear, a
fear without an apparent object. Something unknown, some hidden danger is
experienced as threatening.
Anxiety is also the emotional consequence of self-doubt. In its pure and
undisguised form, self-doubt is always experienced as anxiety. The universal
evaluation underlying self-doubt is always something to the effect: "There
is something wrong with me. I am not functioning right. I do not know how to
make myself happy. There is a danger that my whole being is 'wrong' in some
way. I cannot cope with life." And in extreme cases, the evaluation may
simply have been "I am no good."
The severity of the anxiety will differ from case to case, depending on
whether such a conclusion is localized or generalized, and how intensely it
is held. For example, a person may feel self-doubt because he evaluates one
particular action of his as unworthy of him. In this case, the self-doubt
will be localized and therefore easier to bear than for the person who
consciously or subconsciously evaluates himself as totally unworthy. In the
latter case, self-doubt may be so severely entrenched that it permeates and
conditions all of the individual's other emotions. In such severe cases, it
can lead to the formation of a negative emotional metaphysics, which serves
as a psychologically devastating framework within which the individual
always functions--the malevolent universe premise.
* APOLOGY
The function of an apology is not to enjoy the spectacle of someone's
self-abasement, but to find out whether he endorses or renounces his action.
In order to infer a character trait from a particlar action we need to know
whether the act reflected a standing policy, or whether it was an
aberration. ... David Kelley
* ART 63/Oct/37 65/Apr/16 A selective re-creation of reality according
to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. Metaphysical values are those
which reflect an artist's fundamental view of the nature of man and the
nature of the universe in which he lives.
There is a bit of difficulty with this definition. It implies that art
is, or should be, firmly tied to reality. If so, then is a painting of a
unicorn art? How about the movie Fantasia? See Chapter 10.
See reference
* ATTRIBUTE Basic2 An aspect or characteristic of an object which can be
isolated and identified conceptually but which in fact cannot be separated
from an object and cannot exist by itself.
* AUTHORITARIANISM is the unnatural cord that reaches out to connect one
person's mind with another person's muscles.
* AXIOM FNI-155 A statement that identifies the base of knowledge.
* BEAUTY DK A concept of consciousness. It is the integration of one or
more experiences of pleasure with one or more observations of a
manifestation of one's values.
* BENEVOLENCE
As guidance in dealing with other people, the ethics of Objectivism
stresses the virtue of justice, and especially the necessity of judgment. It
does not explicitly give adequate emphasis to the outgoing, benevolent
attitude that ought to be an important part of a life-affirming philosophy.
Thus some of its advocates seem more comfortable pulling weeds than making
flowers grow.
Can we can identify a virtue that involves a commitment to savoring the
world's joys? To making the flowers of life grow? It might encompass what we
call cultivation of taste, refinement in experiencing values, and a touch of
adventurousness. Sometimes called "joie de vivre" this virtue consists of a
kind of playful ability to discover or create reasons for joy in common
everyday situations. It is an expression of conscious life-loving, as
opposed to just passing through life in a dull and automatized way. This
virtue results from one's sense of life; it springs from and requires a
benevolent sense of life. Indeed, this virtue may be described as a
generalized benevolence, directed not only towards other people, but toward
existence in general and one's own life in particular.
You will recall that this is a central theme in all of Rand's heroes, and
is especially emphasized in The Fountainhead, where Dominique is portrayed
as lacking a benevolent sense of life.
It is the thing that Francisco did have.
* BLASPHEMY is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth. What
last year's leaf says to this year's bud.
* BUREAUCRAT - One of the hallmarks of the bureaucratic mentality is the
belief that the rules themselves are the reason the system exists, and not
the accomplishment of the mission for which the system was originally
established. He becomes no more than a robot, going about a task whose
meaning he has long ago forgotten, if indeed he had ever known it.
* CAPITAL Accumulated stock of value in excess of immediate consumptive
requirements.
* CAPITALISM 63/Nov/44 65/Oct/47 65/Nov/54 A social system based on the
recognition of individual rights, including property rights, and in which
all property is privately owned.
The process of using wealth not for immediate consumption but for the
creation of more wealth. See Chapter 4.
See reference
* CAUSALITY 66/Mar/9 AS-1037 The law of identity applied to action. All
actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and
determined by the nature of the entity that acts; a thing cannot act in
contradiction to its nature.
Causality is a corollary of identity. A "corollary" is an implication of
an already established item of knowledge. A corollary of an axiom is not
itself an axiom; it is not self-evident apart from the axiom at its root.
(An axiom, by contrast, does not depend on an antecedent context). Like an
axiom, a corollary is self-evident once its context has been grasped. It is,
in effect, a consequence of an established principle, which follows
immediately once one grasps its meaning and the principle on which it is
based.
* CELEBRATION Basic16 An action undertaken not as a means to an end but
as an end in itself, for the purpose of giving an objective expression to
the enjoyment of a value achieved in the past. It objectifies the pleasure
of consumption after the successful production of a value.
* CENSORSHIP 62/Mar/9 A government edict that forbids the discussion of
some specific subjects or ideas.
Censorship is always self-destructive. It creates a society incapable of
appreciating the difference between independence of thought and
subservience.
To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for
whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily
deprives still others of the right to listen to those views.
* CERTAINTY A state of mind in which a person perceives a correlation
between his mental images and Reality. See Chapter 3.
See reference
* CONFIDENCE AS-1019 Basic10 The knowledge that the judgment of one's
mind is valid. People who are merely self-centered have the sort of
arrogance that sometimes appears to be confidence.
* CHAOS * RANDOM
Compare the behavior of commuters dashing through a train station at rush
hour with the behavior of a large, terrified crowd. The former resembles
chaos in that although an observer unfamiliar with train stations might
think people were running every which way without reason, order does
underlie the surface complexity: each person is hurrying to a specific
destination. The traffic flow could rapidly be changed simply by announcing
a change in schedule. In contrast, mass hysteria is random. No simple
announcement would make a large mob become orderly.
* CHARACTER 67/Mar/4 The sum of the principles and values that guide a
man's actions in the face of moral choices. The relation of a motive to a
character trait is that of a concrete instance to a general rule.
* PERSONALITY PRL-75 The externally perceivable sum of all the
psychological traits and characteristics that distinguish a human being from
all other human beings. 67/Mar/4 The superficial mannerisms by which his
principles are acted out.
* COERCION - A relationship in which a person is subjected to physical
force (or the threat of it) in order to compel him to submit to the choices
of another person. The separation of a person from his rightfully achieved
values without his voluntary consent. Any course of action calculated to
inflict physical injury, regardless of whether or not the action succeeds in
its intent. Libertarians usually use the term "initiate force" when
discussing this subject, but a more accurate term is "engage in coercion."
This emphasizes that the principle underlying the behavior is time-
independent. (See Chapter 6 * Preemptive force)
See reference
* COGNITIVE * NORMATIVE 65/Mar/10 65/Apr/15 Cognitive abstractions
identify the facts of reality. Normative abstractions evaluate the facts,
thus prescribing a choice of values and a course of action. Cognitive
abstractions deal with that which IS; normative abstractions deal with that
which OUGHT TO BE (in the realms open to man's choice). Cognitive
abstractions form the epistemological foundation of science; Normative
abstractions, of morality and of art.
See Chapter 1 for a discussion of the Is-Ought dichotomy.
See reference
* COINS HPD-178 Real money transformed into a recognizable shape and
weight in order to facilitate exchange.
* TOKEN HPD-180 A money substitute in metallic form rather than paper.
* COLLECTIVISM
The fundamental collectivist idea is that in the face of some "higher good"
the individual is nothing and has no rights.
Beware of attempts to build group spirit. The inevitable price for this
is the diminution of individuality. Many attempts to encourage group spirit
are merely indirect attempts to impose conformity.
* COMMON GOOD 65/Dec/55 An undefinable concept. "Good" and "Value"
pertain only to an individual living organism, not to a disembodied
aggregate of relationships. If taken literally its only possible meaning is:
the sum of the good of all the individual men involved. But in that case the
concept is meaningless as an ethical criterion: it leaves open the question
of what is the good of an individual man and how does one determine it? The
concept becomes an ethical blank check for those who use it. It means that
the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others.
* COMMUNICATION DK Transfer of information from one mind to another such
that both minds recognize the meaning of the information.
* COMPLEX A complex system is one comprised of many agents, each of
which interacts with its neighbors and can adapt to change.
* COMPROMISE 62/Jul/29 64/Jan/1 An adjustment of conflicting claims by
mutual concessions. This means that both parties have some valid claim and
some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon
some fundamental principle which serves as a foundation for their deal. It
is only in regard to concretes or particulars implementing a mutually
accepted basic principle that compromise can occur. It is an exercise of
reason that civilized people use to resolve their differences. It is not an
exercise in deception by means of which one party swindles the other.
Mr. Right and Mr. Left were walking down the street. Mr. Left led them
along the sidewalk on the hot sunny left side of the street. Mr. Right,
desiring the cooler, shaded right side of the street, suggested that they
cross to the other side. "But I like the sun!" said Mr. Left. A passerby, Ms
Compromise, suggested that they cross halfway and walk down the middle of
the road. Mr. Left thought, "The middle of the road is still in the sun, so
I am not losing anything, and maybe this complainer will shut up." So he
agreed. Mr. Right thought to himself that he would be halfway to his goal,
so he would be able to wheedle the other half after another block or so, and
so he agreed too. So they crossed halfway and walked down the middle of the
road. Mr. Right was about to comment on how uncomfortably hot he still was,
but just then they were both killed by a speeding bus.
II Corinthians: What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
and what communion hath light with darkness?
* CONCEPT IOE-17 A mental integration of two or more units possessing the
same distinguishing characteristic(s) with their particular measurements
omitted. 65/Apr/15 A mental integration of two or more perceptual concretes
which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by means of a
specific definition. 67/Jun/7 The meaning of a concept consists of the
units--the existents--which it integrates, including all the characteristics
of these units.
The principle of concept-formation which states that "the omitted
measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity" is
the equivalent of the basic principle of algebra, which states that
"algebraic symbols must be given some numerical value, but may be given any
value." In this regard, perceptual awareness is the arithmetic, but
conceptual awareness is the algebra of cognition. Let those who attempt to
invalidate concepts by declaring that they cannot find "manness" in men, try
to invalidate algebra by declaring that they cannot find "x-ness" in 5 or in
5000.
The file folder (the concept) is not the same as the label (the
definition) that identifies and condenses the folder's contents. Nor is the
folder restricted to its present contents. The folder exists so that we can
separate out as a single category, and then study and interrelate, all the
data ever to pertain to a given subject. That is precisely what the concept
enables us to do. A concept, once formed, does not change. The knowledge men
have of the units may grow and the definition may change accordingly, but
the concept, the mental integration, remains the same. Otherwise there would
be no way to relate new knowledge of an entity to previous knowledge
subsumed under an earlier-formed concept - because the concept would have
changed; the file folder itself would be different. In addition, no two
people's concept of the same entity would be the same if their knowledge
varied, which would make communication impossible.
* ANTI-CONCEPT The Ayn Rand Letter pg 1 An unnecessary and rationally
unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept.
The use of anti-concepts gives the listener a sense of approximate
understanding, but they are merely memorized sounds unrelated to valid
knowledge or to any clearly defined facts.
* CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS IOE-33 A mental integration of two or more
instances of a psychological process possessing the same distinguishing
characteristics with the particular contents and the measurements of the
action's intensity omitted.
* CONCEPTUALIZE 66/Dec/13 To organize an indiscriminate perceptual chaos
in terms of essential characteristics.
* CONSCIOUSNESS PSE-3 5 The faculty and state of awareness. The condition
of an organism in cognizing, perceiving, or sensing. WAR-63 The function of
consciousness is perception, cognition and the initiation and direction of
action.
Consciousness, or mind, is the action performed by a brain.
* COURAGE - BASIC10 The knowledge that to act on the judgment of one's
mind is practical. AS-1019 The practical form of being true to existence.
* CRIME - See Chapter 6
See reference
* CURRENCY HPD-178 Money substitutes in paper form.
* DECIDOPHOBIA The fear of making the decisions that give shape to one's
life.
* DEDUCTION IOE-30 The process of subsuming new instances under a known
concept.
* DEFLATION HPD-178 A decrease in the amount of money substitutes that
are in excess of the stored stock of real money.
* DEFINITION
63/Jan/3: An identification of the specific meaning of a concept,
accomplished by isolating the facts of reality to which the concept refers
and of which the concept is a mental integration. The purpose of defining
one's terms is to afford oneself the inestimable benefit of knowing what one
is talking about. 67/Jul/9: To keep a concept distinct from all others, to
keep it connected to a specific group of existents. HPD-29: To draw a sharp
line between what IS a certain thing and what isn't. BASIC6: A statement
that identifies the essential characteristics of the aspect of reality which
a concept denotes. IOE-76: A statement that identifies the nature of a
concept's units.
See Chapter 3
See reference
* DEMAND DEPOSIT HPD-178 The storing of your money in a bank but having
it still available on demand, for which you usually pay a fee.
* DEPRESSION 67/Jan/12 Response to the loss of a value or the sense of
being unable to achieve a value.
* SUFFERING 62/Jan/3 The emotion that results from the frustration of
one's desire or the destruction of one's values.
* DEPRESSION HPD-178 62/Aug/33 The liquidation period following a
prolonged inflationary cycle and/or a liquidation period in which
governmental restraint of trade prevents orderly liquidation thereby
prolonging a recession.
A depression happens when ALL the businesspeople make the same mistakes
at the same time, which can only be because they all get the same wrong
information. And there is only one way that can happen to the whole economy
at once. Government! They're the only ones who have the power to make the
same mistakes happen everywhere. Both the boom and the bust are not features
of the free-market system at all, but the results of interfering with it.
* DESPAIR - The conclusion underlying despair is something to the effect:
"I want something that I value very highly, something that I believe is
crucial to my happiness, and I don't think I can ever have it." Included in
this evaluation is a strong element of hopelessness about the future. If the
conclusion applied only to the present--only to not achieving some value
for the time being--the resulting emotion could be sadness, hurt, and
disappointment, but not despair. The hopelessness in severe cases can take
the form of the person's losing the desire to take any action--sometimes
losing the desire even to get out of bed. It is always despair that leads to
suicide. In cases of suicide, the devastating underlying conclusion doesn't
apply to just one particular value, but encompasses the whole future of the
person's life.
Gandalf: Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt.
* DETERMINISM 63/May/17 Denies the existence of any element of freedom or
volition in man's consciousness. It holds that every action, desire and
thought of man is determined by forces beyond his control.
But if man believes what he HAS to believe; if he is not free to test his
beliefs against reality and to validate or reject them; if the actions and
content of his mind are determined by factors that may or may not have
anything to do with reason logic and reality; then he can never know if his
conclusions are true or false. If his capacity to judge is not free there is
no way for a man to discriminate between his beliefs and those of a raving
lunatic. (Or to assert as truth the postulate of determinism.)
See the Fallacys file
* DEVALUATION HPD-178 Repudiation of the government's promise to honor
its money substitutes at the stated rate of exchange.
* DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM WAR-16 AS-320,952 Man's mind and its content
are determined by the material factors of production existing at a given
time. Discovery of Freedom by R. W. Lane: The communist is looking for the
Authority that controls men and taking it for granted that since the man
does not control himself then the Authority that controls him must be his
situation.
* DISSOCIATION The failure of the power to recall things which normally
should be remembered; an interruption or repression of memory.
* DOGMA A set of beliefs accepted from the voice of authority.
* DUTY 70/Jul/3 The distinction is between realistic necessity
(obligation) and human whims (duty). A debt you owe to yourself to fulfill.
Obligations you have assumed voluntarily. See Integrity,
* Diffidation - The renunciation of a relationship of allegiance. This is
a fine but obsolete word that has fallen out of usage because governments do
not recognize what it stands for.
* ECONOMICS is the production, transportation, exchange and consumption
of wealth. It is also the study of these activities. Economics is the study
of how people get the things they want.
There are two broad divisions of economics: Personal (in which a person
produces wealth and then consumes that wealth himself) and Social (in which
more than one person is involved in the production or consumption of
wealth).
Macroeconomics: the study of the money supply, the GNP, and the
regulation of credit on a nationwide scale. (A lecture on mass transit
systems.)
Microeconomics: the study of the aggregate of individual market
transactions. (A study of the average gas mileage of the local buses.)
Picoeconomics: the study of the relationship of individual human beings
to the economic world each lives in. (Directions to the nearest bus stop.)
* EGO - PSE-148 161 A man's ego is his mind--his faculty of awareness--
the faculty that preserves the inner continuity of his own existence and
generates his sense of personal identity. Ego and mind denote the same fact
of reality: that which knows, judges and feels.
A person has a strong sense of identity when he knows what he thinks and
values in the important areas of his life, and continues to pursue those
values in action. One experiences a strong sense of identity as an emotional
constant, which can be summed up in the feeling, "I know who I am." A person
who tells you that he has spent the last six months with a guru in India
trying to find out who he is, is confessing that he does not know his values
and does not have a strong sense--or perhaps any sense--of personal
identity.
The key to personal identity is values. The more developed, integrated,
and intensely held are a person's values, the stronger is his sense of
identity .
If you know that you like to travel, or that you like to knit, or that
you just like to walk in the forest--any activity that gives you pleasure--
that will go toward building a feeling of "That is me." Furthermore,
strongly-held values in any area of a person's life will make him more
consistent, stronger, and more of a candidate for happiness. The more you
know what you like, and what will make you happy, the more you know who the
"you" that you "are" is.
No one is born with a strong sense of identity; it has to be developed.
Such development can be observed most dramatically during adolescence:
teenagers are normally involved in an intense process of separating and
individuating themselves from their parents, eagerly trying to find the
values which will make them uniquely themselves.
* EGOISM 62/Sep/39 Holds that man is an end in himself; that ethically
the beneficiary of an action should be the person who acts. WAR-31 Holds
that self interest is man's proper moral goal.
The egoist is the person with the true ego; he has a rationally based
sense of his self worth. The egotist is the one who falsely inflates his
image. He is the braggart or the megalomaniac. These two terms, egoism and
egotism, differentiate rational from irrational self-images.
* EMERGENCY * CRISIS 63/Feb/6 An event, limited in time, that creates
conditions under which human survival is impossible. A situation which
cannot continue without the occurrence of a disaster. In an emergency
situation man's primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger
and restore normal conditions. Man cannot live his life by the guidance of
rules applicable only to conditions under which human survival is
impossible. (See Natural Rights in Chapter 5.)
See reference
* EMOTION 62/Jan/3 The psychosomatic form in which man experiences his
estimate of the relationship of things to himself. The psychosomatic
embodiment of a value judgment. VOS-27 Estimates of that which furthers
man's values or threatens them. 66/Jan/14 Reactions to the appraisal of
perceptions, as opposed to feelings, which are reactions to the appraisal of
sensations. DK States of consciousness produced by actual or anticipated
change in the relationship between a person and his values.
An emotion derives from a perception evaluated within a context; the
context may consist of a highly complex conceptual content. Most of this
content at any time is not present in conscious awareness. But it is real
and operative nonetheless. What makes emotions incomprehensible to many
people is the fact that they hold ideas which are not only largely
subconscious, but frequently inconsistent as well. Men have the ability to
accept contradictions without knowing it, and this leads to the appearance
of a conflict between thought and emotions.
* EMOTIONAL OPENNESS - SEM 13 Communication of the value-significance of
things and events.
* ENVY The motive of a man who is willing to make himself worse off in
order to bring another down to his level. See Chapter 3.
See reference
* EPISTEMOLOGY 64/Oct/41 The science that studies the nature and means of
human knowledge. Its primary purpose is to establish the criteria of
knowledge and thus enable man to distinguish between that which he may and
may not regard as knowledge.
* THE PROBLEM OF THE UNIVERSALS is basically this: we know that any two
people (or cars, or trees, or whatever) are individually different, but how
is it that we know what is meant when it is said that two things, which are
clearly different, are also of the same "kind" or "type" of thing? What is
exemplified "universally," by ALL people (or cars, or trees, etc.)? The two
main historical alternatives on this issue are "Nominalism" and "Realism."
Nominalism says that no two things are the same, and that we know what
other people mean because there are social conventions in place that govern
how people use words. The notion that there could be literally abstract
ideas is regarded as being incoherent. Classification is regarded as
entirely pragmatic.
Realism says that all things have some special inner essence or "form"
that justifies calling all things that have this same "form" by the same
name. Concept-formation results from a process much like an intuition or
"sixth sense." We are just supposed to grasp the essences of things.
See the "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" for an alternative.
* ESSENCE IOE-49 The essence of a concept is that fundamental
characteristic of its units on which the greatest number of other
characteristics depend and which distinguishes these units from all other
existents.
* ESTEEM Dec86-5 The recognition of character traits or qualities which
you judge to be of significant (moral) value.
* ETHICS 65/Apr/15 70/Jun/4 VOS-15
* MORALITY 64/Jun/21 64/Nov/48 65/Mar/10 WAR-24 Morality in children:
65/Mar/9
That branch of philosophy that studies values, especially those which are
considered to be the proper values for guiding man's choices and actions, is
referred to as Ethics and/or Morality. I distinguish these two terms by
observing that Morality deals with intra-personal actions whereas Ethics
deals with inter-personal actions. See Chapter 1
Moral principles are requirements of man's survival, and are derived by
reference to the most fundamental aspects of his existence. They are life-
or-death absolutes. The need for morality arises from man's distinctive
nature. Since man, unlike lower animals, does not automatically perform the
actions necessary to satisfy his natural needs, he must exercise free choice
to do so. Thus morality is a code of values accepted by choice. But in order
to determine what his needs are and how to satisfy them, man must think--he
must be rational, that is, be conscious of reality and disposed to act
accordingly. Man is not particularly fast, strong, sharp-clawed or well-
insulated from the elements. But he is vastly more intelligent than the
other animals, and this intelligence endows him with a mode of survival in
which the exercise of his rationality plays the central role. That is why
Rand defined man as "the rational animal."
* EUPHEMISM An inoffensive way of identifying an offensive fact. Or,
more likely, a way of avoiding the necessity of identification.
* EVASION - The willful suspension of your consciousness; not blindness,
but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the
act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog in order to escape the
responsibility of judgment (or to knowingly make moral judgments based on
incomplete information)--on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist
if only you refuse to identify it. In essence, evasion is the refusal to
think.
How are we know when a man is engaging in evasion? It's very rare that
someone will openly admit, "I refuse to think about it." And even in such a
case, how can we be certain that we are actually witnessing deliberate
evasion, as opposed to an involuntary psychological problem? There are a
thousand reasons other than evasion why an honest man may fail to grasp a
particular argument, no matter how clear and brilliant the presentation may
be. This is inherent in the nature of Man's conceptual faculty. Rational men
are not moved by mere facts; they are moved by principles, and an honest man
does not change his principles on the spur of the moment, even when
confronted with an unanswerable argument. An honest, conscientious man needs
time to think things through. This is an inescapable result of the facts
that conceptualization is volitional, not instinctive or automatic, and that
it requires a lot of mental energy to carry it out successfully. Men can
make enormous mistakes on the conceptual level, and thus must always proceed
with great caution.
Observing the depressing frequency with which many Randites denounce
their opponents as evaders, one might be tempted to conclude that
Objectivism is a great magnet for simple-minded fools who have deluded
themselves into thinking that they are philosophical and psychological
experts.
* EVALUATION PSE-91 The process of identifying the beneficial or harmful
relationship of some aspect of reality to oneself.
* EVIDENCE is suggestive or indicative information, frequently based on
observations or oral statements. * DATA, on the other hand, usually take the
form of numerical information, suitable for processing and analysis.
* EXPERIENCE 70/Mar/2 The evidence of man's senses.
* EXPLANATION 68/Feb/9 To account for some aspect of reality which you do
not understand on the basis of concepts which have already been validated.
"The primary goal of an argument is to show THAT some proposition is true,
while the primary goal of an explanation is to show WHY it is true. In an
argument, we reason forward from the premises to the conclusion; in an
explanation we reason backwards from a fact to the cause or reason for that
fact." ... David Kelley
* EXPLOITATION DK involves the making of two judgments of a situation
from two different perspectives. The person being exploited judges his
situation and concludes that he is choosing a desirable alternative. The
person who sees the situation as exploitative is judging that there are more
preferable alternatives available.
* EXTREMISM - A phenomenon may be simultaneously measured on many
ideological scales. It can be at the end point of one scale and in the
middle of another, so one man's extremism may be another's moderation.
Some people try to pose as moderates by describing an imaginary position
beyond their own and then pretending to seek "compromise." Indeed, this is a
common tactic among politicians: they describe a position asking for the
moon and then "settle" for the stratosphere.
* FACT "Fact" is a concept necessitated by our form of consciousness:
we are not infallible. An error is possible, or a lie is possible, or
imagination is possible. Therefore, when we say something is a fact, we
distinguish primarily from error, lie, or any aberration of consciousness.
And it serves another function: it delimits the concept "existence" or
"reality." For instance, you may have noticed that Rand often used the
expression "facts of reality." What is added to the term "reality" by saying
"facts"? It is narrowed to mean: whichever aspects, events, or existents you
happen to know about, these are the facts of reality--these are the things
which you know to exist.
* FAIR - what informed people freely agree to. In a tyranny, "fair" is
defined merely as equality of imposed suffering.
* FAITH 62/Mar/11 The acceptance of an idea without evidence or proof or
in spite of evidence to the contrary. Faith is that faculty which enables
people to believe things which they know to be untrue.
* FANATIC - A fanatic is a person in whom one impulse, one value, has
assumed ascendancy over all others.
As George Santayana observed: "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your
effort when you have forgotten your aim."
* FAVOR 65/OCT/48 A favor means the unearned, since the earned is a
right, not a favor.
* FEAR 62/Jan/3 Your response to that which threatens your values. Fear
is how you feel when you wait for something bad to happen, and fun is what
you have when you figure out a way to make something good happen.
* FEELING 66/Jan/14 A positive or negative internal state which is a
direct and immediate effect of sensory stimulation.
* FRAUD 63/Dec/46 Obtaining material values without their owner's consent
under false pretenses or false promises. Receiving values then refusing to
pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession)
not by right, and without the consent of their owner.
* FREE WILL 64/Jan/3 64/Apr/15 holds that man is capable of performing
actions that are not determined by forces outside his control; that man has
the power of making choices which are causal primaries. Objectivism locates
man's free will in a single action of his consciousness: to focus his mind
or not to do so. Man has the power to regulate the action of his own
consciousness.
* FREEDOM * LIBERTY - See Chapter 5. WAR-43
Note that I use the terms "liberty" and "freedom" synonymously throughout
my writings. I don't see any justification for making a distinction between
those terms.
In a political-economic context, freedom means only the absence of
physical compulsion. A free society is that state of affairs where there are
no man-made restraints on the release of creative human energy.
See reference
* GENERAL PRICE LEVEL HPD-178 the available money supply divided by the
goods and services available for sale.
* GOAL (OPAR) "Goal" is not synonymous with "purpose" The latter term
applies only to the goals of conscious beings, who are aware of the objects
they pursue. Objectivism does not endorse "teleology," meaning the theory
that insentient entities can act purposefully, or that all organisms are
moved by a conscious or subconscious striving. As Ayn Rand explains, "Goal-
directed designates the fact that the automatic functions of living
organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the
preservation of an organism's life." Living organisms initiate a consistent
kind of action, which leads (within the limits of the possible) to a
consistent outcome. This is the sense in which their action is "goal-
directed." Living organisms can (and must) act to pursue goals because an
organism, unlike an inanimate object, faces the alternative of life or
death.
* GOOD 64/Nov/47 65/Dec/55 An evaluation of the facts of reality by man's
consciousness according to a rational standard of value. The good is an
aspect of reality in relation to man. It must be discovered, not invented,
by man.
Dec83-7 That which a man finds of value through the independent judgment
of his rational mind.
The good is that which objectively furthers our needs as living beings.
The knowledge of Good and Evil is the ability to comprehend values within
context.
* EVIL
Evil is a man's deliberate choice to do something he knows to be immoral
or unethical.
False ideas are not evil. This is because, unlike human beings, ideas do
not possess the attribute of volition. Since evil requires that one CHOOSE
to do something immoral, only humans can be evil.
* GREATNESS AS-1145 To be master of reality in a manner no other has
equaled.
* HAPPINESS 62/Jan/3 AS-1014 the consequence of fulfilled desire. The
emotion that results from the achievement of one's values.
* HATRED 62/Jan/3 The consequence of fear. The wish for the destruction
of that which endangers my values.
* HEDONISM - To hold pleasure as a global value is to operate on the
principle of hedonism. This view of life is not limited merely to those who
seek continual stimulation by food, drink, and sex. Another form of the same
basic principle is represented by the adventurer, who seeks the stimulant of
risk. And another form can be seen in the connoisseur, who seeks refinement
in his pleasures. Pleasure as a central value may take many different forms.
What unites them all is the attitude that the meaning of life lies in the
immediate experience of pleasure.
But that immediacy is the problem with making pleasure one's central
value. Human life is lived through time. As Aristotle observed, it is the
integrated sum of a lengthy series of events. Someone who pursues pleasure
as a central value tends to discover at some point that his life has not
added up to anything, that he has drifted along without leaving a wake.
Pleasure pursued as a primary value has a hollow core, unlike the kind of
enjoyment that is a response to values one has created. It is pleasing to
see a beautiful garden, but there is a much deeper sort of pleasure in the
sight of a garden one has designed, planted, and cultivated oneself.
* HONESTY PSE-219 AS-859,1019 The refusal to seek values by faking
reality--by evading the distinction between the real and the unreal.
* HUMANITIES - the study and/or evaluation of man and his actions.
* HYPOCRISY - to assert the falsity of that which is real while asserting
the reality of that which is false.
* IDEA - A light turned on in a man's soul.
* IDEALISM 66/Sep/10 Aspiration to any values above the level of the
commonplace.
* IMPLICIT knowledge is that which is available to your consciousness but
which you have not conceptualized.
* INDEPENDENCE AS-1019 PSE-219 A commitment to one's own perception of
reality as an absolute standard of thought and action. The acceptance of
intellectual responsibility for one's own existence. Responsibility must
come from within, as a commitment to one's own values, rather than from the
outside, as a duty to God, family, or community. Responsibility in action
flows from a sense of self-ownership, from motivation by values rather than
duties.
"Self-responsibility is the key to personal effectiveness in virtually
every sphere of life--from working on one's marriage to pursuing a career to
developing into an increasingly whole and balanced human being. It
constitutes the moral foundation of social existence and therefore has
political ramifications as well." ... Nathaniel Branden
Government measures always imply more or less compulsion; and even where
this is not directly the case, they accustom men to look for instruction,
guidance, and assistance from without, rather than to rely upon their own
expedients.
* INDIVIDUALISM 62/Apr/13 As an ethical-political concept it upholds the
supremacy of individual rights. The principle that man is an end in himself,
not a means to the ends of others. As an ethical-psychological concept it
holds that man should think and judge independently, valuing nothing higher
than the sovereignty of his intellect. Feb86-9
* INDUCTION IOE-30 The process of observing the facts of reality and of
integrating them into concepts.
* INFATUATION 68/Jan/3 Selectively focusing on one or two aspects of a
total personality while ignoring or being oblivious to the rest, and
responding as though the person were only those particular aspects.
* INFLATION HPD-29 An increase in money substitutes above the stock of
real money in storage. The counterfeiting of paper money.
* INSANITY AS-567 A condition wherein a person is so far out of cognitive
contact with reality (not in the content of his mind but in its method of
functioning) that he can't tell what's real. Doing the same unsuccessful
thing you have always done but expecting different results.
If we are indeed born tabula rasa, then sanity too must be learned.
* INSIGHT A sense of something beautiful boiling up inside me.
* INSTINCT See Chapter 3
See reference
* INTEGRITY AS-1019 63/Feb/6 The policy of acting in accordance with
one's values--of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical
reality. PSE-219 Loyalty in action to the judgment of one's consciousness.
Heinlein: Your agreement with yourself to abide by your own rules.
* INTELLECTUAL AMMUNITION Verbal bullets for people who want to shoot
their mouths off.
* INTELLIGENCE 70/Aug/6 The ability to deal with a broad range of
abstractions. IOE-27 33 The standard of measurement that differentiates one
type of consciousness from another is its range. Intelligence is a
measurement of the range of your consciousness: the extent to which you are
able to be conscious of the facts of reality, and able to form and
manipulate concepts.
Practical intelligence is the ability to do useful things with your mind.
* INTRINSICISM
Intrinsicism is the belief that moral judgments are somehow self-evident
and can be cast in spite of, or in direct contradiction to, empirical
evidence.
It maintains that morality is revealed to us and the mind is a passive
entity, absorbing the truth by revelation or the acceptance of authority,
and that no cognitive initiative is required beyond the effort to open one's
mental eyes, and thus any failure to grasp the truth is a moral failure, a
willful refusal to see.
It is characterised by the designation of certain texts, such as the
Bible, (or, for Randites, the works of Ayn Rand,) whose teachings must be
accepted, or else. Thus religious authoritarianism is a type of
intrinsicism.
An intrinsicist believes that guilt attaches to certain actions
regardless of the agent's knowledge or context - that what is right and
wrong is determined by certain facts or authorities, and must be accepted as
duty.
Intrinsicism naturally leads to dogmatism because the intrinsicist has
placed adherence to fixed conclusions above the very process by which valid
conclusions can be reached.
While Objectivism asks you to learn to distinguish between errors of
knowledge and errors of morality, the Randites tend to identify virtually
all errors of knowledge as errors of morality. This is why those who
disagree with them, particularly intellectuals, are considered evil.
Objectivism shows that the intrinsic and the subjective are false
alternatives, and that the only real alternative is truth or falsity.
Objectivism faults intrinsicism for ignoring the fact that knowledge
requires a knower and values a valuer. And it faults subjectivism for
ignoring the fact that the world exists and is what it is.
Rand rejected both intrinsicism and subjectivism as being variations on
the primacy of consciousness.
See also Truth and Toleration by David Kelley pg 37,49,73-74
* INTUITION
Intuition is usually thought to be the faculty of attaining knowledge
without rational thought and inference, but that is a false concept.
Intuition is actually just one of the ways in which the subconscious mind
talks to the conscious mind. The subconscious is the content of your mind
that you are not focused on at any given moment. It is simply a repository
for information acquired in the past and conclusions that your mind has
formed about that information. The subconscious does perform certain
important processes, but they are not in any way mystical or non-rational
(even though they may be sometimes nonsensical). The conscious mind is
always able to determine what they are and to correct them if necessary.
Intuition, revelation, sudden insight and emotions are the expression of
conclusions fed by the subconscious mind to the conscious mind.
The subconscious can, through the process of automatization, be a
repository of habits which have been learned well enough that they no longer
need being consciously attended to. It is an error to suppose that we should
cultivate the practice of always thinking about what we are doing. Cognitive
competence advances by extending the number of important behaviors which we
can perform without thinking about them. Only by automatizing much of our
behavior can we free our minds for the implementation of new ideas.
Evolution has automatized much neural processing by incorporating it into
subconscious circuitry, but the output of that circuitry can be put to
actual use by the conscious mind only if there exists a free flow of
information between the subconscious mind and the conscious mind.
Nathaniel Branden once commented on "the biological forces deep within
our organism that speak to us in a wordless language we have barely begun to
decipher." I rather suspect that it is more likely the case that we have
forgotten how to decipher their language. The trappings of civilization have
cozened humans to sever their direct links with fundamentally important
values and "the biological forces deep within our organism" that impel us to
the achievement of those values. Thus we live in what Rand has so aptly
described as a condition of "cultural value-deprivation." Just as cultural
influences have deprived us of the motivation for value-achievement, they
have also erected barriers to the free flow of information between the
subconscious mind and the conscious mind. While it's true that everyone has
intuition, not all of us have the same capacity to use it. To enhance that
capacity we must direct our attention to the myriad of internal signals
which the subconscious mind is continually sending out to the conscious
mind.
The study of this information flow is called "psycho-epistemology" and
was first recognized by Barbara Branden in the mid-1950s. This field of
study forms an important part of the Biocentric Psychology that is a subset
of the Philosophy of Objectivism.
* IRRATIONALITY 62/Jan/3 The relationship of reason and emotion is that
of cause and effect. Irrationality consists of the attempt to reverse this
relationship: to let one's emotions determine one's thinking, and to judge
what is true or false by the standard of what is "pleasant" or "unpleasant."
Philosophically this attempt is the cause of mysticism; psychologically it
is the cause of neurosis.
* IRRATIONALISM 69/Oct/2 The doctrine that reason is not a valid means of
knowledge nor a proper guide to action. Irrationalism is the sheer defiance
of reason and logic per se. One can be an irrationalist without being a
mystic.
* MYSTICISM Basic3 The claim to a non-sensory, non-rational form of
knowledge. The claim that there are aspects of existence that can be known
by means of a unique cognitive faculty whose judgments are above the
authority of sensory observation or reason.
There is a fallacy underlying the mystical notion that we can understand
the functioning of our mind (or anything else) by stopping the mind's usual
sort of thinking and then attempting (usually by holding very still) to see
and hear the fine details of mental life. This denies the fundamental
process of how we come to understand anything complicated. If we suspend our
conscious ways of thinking, we'll be bereft of all the parts of mind already
trained to interpret complicated phenomena.
* IRRELEVANCY A topic not subsumed by the principle that underlies
(explicitly or implicitly) the discussion.
* JEALOUSY Jealousy represents a composite of a number of emotions,
which are experienced as a single unit. The individual emotions included in
it are anxiety, anger, distrust, fear, intolerance, resentment, and
suspicion.
Jealousy is also the assertion of property rights over a human being. The
jealous person is saying, in effect: "Hey! That's MY (wife, bicycle,
lawnmower, etc.) You keep your hands off of (her, it).
* JOLLY DK How you feel when you have just spent half an hour listening
to the music of Scott Joplin.
* JUDGE 62/Apr/15 To evaluate a given concrete by reference to an
abstract principle or standard.
* NONJUDGMENTAL
From the Random House dictionary:
Judgmental - involving the use or exercise of judgment. 2.tending to make
moral judgments.
Example: to avoid a judgmental approach in dealing with divorced
couples.
Nonjudgmental - not judged or judging on the basis of one's personal
standards or opinions.
Example: They tried to adopt a nonjudgmental attitude that didn't
reflect their own biases. My guidance counselor in high school was
sympathetic and nonjudgmental.
What these definitions lack is any acknowledgement of the process of
making judgments on the basis of a rational (as opposed to arbitrary or
biased) standard of morality and ethics.
The term "nonjudgmental" contains a stolen concept. In order to decide
that it is better to be "nonjudgmental" than to be "judgmental," you must
make a judgment about the relative desirability of the two concepts. You
must say, in effect, "My judgment is that it is better to be nonjudgmental."
This is a form of self-contradiction in which you accept and use the thing
that you are rejecting in order to perform the act of rejecting it.
You are trying to have your (judgmental) cake and eat it too.
* JUSTICE PSE-219 IOE-49 AS-737,1019 The practice of identifying men for
what they are and treating them accordingly. The practice of recognizing
causality and individual responsibility in social relationships. The law of
causality and/or the law of Identity applied to human behavior. Maximizing
virtue within the limits of human judgment. Notions of justice or injustice
don't apply to the results of an impersonal process, only to the general
rules that are enforced.
Under justice individuals are held to be causal agents and are held
responsible for the consequences of their actions. Under all the forms of
determinism, you can't have justice, because individuals are not believed to
be causal agents. Instead, they are regarded as billiard balls, as entities
who are merely acted upon and therefore helpless in doing the things they
do.
When you are visited by the consequences of your own choices, this is
justice. What most people decry as "the injustice of the world" is suffering
the consequences of someone else's choices. Justice is when you have to pay
your own debts. Injustice is when you have to pay someone else's debts.
Though the rules and proceedings of justice be artificial they are not
arbitrary.
* KARMA The sum of the psychological effects that a person's behavior
has on himself. Karma is the memory of your soul. It is not intellectual but
spiritual. It does not consist of facts, words or images, but is an
integration of judgments--judgments that your subconscious mind makes of
your own behavior.
From The Talmud: "I call heaven and earth to witness, that whether it be
Gentile or Israelite, man or woman, slave or handmaid, according to the
deeds which he does, so will the Holy Spirit rest on him."
Over the course of time, a man becomes what he does.
* LANGUAGE 65/Apr/15 A code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the
psycho-epistemological function of converting abstractions into concretes,
or more precisely into the psycho-epistemological equivalent of concretes:
to a manageable number of specific units. (It can be either a tool for
identifying and understanding reality or a tool for manipulating one's
social environment.)
* LAW Basic13 A rule of action pertaining to the relationships of men
inhabiting the same country. Tonie Nathan: Enunciations of principles of
justice.
Law is what government builds to assure its perpetuity.
* LAW OF IDENTITY Basic3 Law of Identity: A is A. Law of Contradiction: a
thing cannot be A and notA. Law of Excluded Middle: a thing is either A or
notA.
(OPAR) - Existence has primacy; it sets the terms and consciousness
obeys. To be is to have a nature; that is the law of existence - which
defines thereby the function of consciousness: to discover the nature of
that which is. Thus Ayn Rand's formulation, which brings together in six
words the fundamental principle of being and its expression in the field of
cognition: "Existence is Identity; Consciousness is Identification." By thus
setting the task of consciousness, the law of identity acts as a bridge
linking existence and consciousness, or metaphysics and epistemology. The
law acts as a bridge in a second respect also. The law defines the basic
rule of method required for a conceptual consciousness to achieve its task.
The law tells man: identifications must be noncontradictory.
* LEADER * RULER
A leader is the lady who goes ahead with a torch, lighting the way for
those who follow.
A ruler is the man who comes behind with a whip, driving them onward.
When you rule people you wind up having to do everything yourself, since
you have to have everything done exactly YOUR way. But when you lead, you
set the objectives and then allow your followers to do their jobs as they
know how (and as only they know how). All you should do is step in when
things go wrong or look like they're going to go wrong. The trick is in
knowing when to step in. But when you rule, you step in all the time because
you think only in terms of control. The followers get used to being told
what to do and sooner or later will bog down because they're afraid of using
their own judgment.
* LIBERTARIANISM is the statement of a political principle. As John
Hospers described it: "a philosophy of personal liberty--the liberty of each
person to live according to his own choices, provided that he does not
attempt to coerce others and thus prevent them from living according to
their choices. Libertarians hold this to be an inalienable right of man;
thus, libertarianism represents a total commitment to the concept of
individual rights." It is a political philosophy, concerned with the
appropriate use of force. It asks one question: Under what conditions is the
use of force justified? And it gives one answer: only in response to
coercion.
"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under
any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to
advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this
principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail
to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they
may claim." .... L. Neil Smith
This political principle is implemented through the social institution of
* ANARCHY. See Chapter 6
See reference
* STATISM 65/May/19 The opposite of libertarianism is statism, the
principle that it is proper for the community (or a selected subgroup
thereof) to compel the behavior of its individual members. This political
principle is implemented through the social institution of government.
* STATEOLATRY The stateolatrist is a devout statist who views (usually
implicitly) government as an object of religious worship. He is one
manifestation of what Eric Hoffer described as a "True Believer." He regards
government as being the ultimate foundation of morality and ethics, and as
an absolute prerequisite to civilized human existence.
* GOVERNMENT 63/Dec/45 Capitalism The Unknown Ideal pg 46: An institution
that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in
a given geographical area. Think8: A social agency that performs the task
of formulating and enforcing the laws of a country.
DK: Government is the social institution by means of which the principle
of coercion is implemented. In practice throughout history, the fundamental
distinguishing characteristic of government has been that it is an
institution established by the strongest gang of aggressors in a particular
area at a particular time. Government is not itself a principle but is the
institutionalization of an ethical principle. A gang of bandits becomes a
government when it establishes an institution for the purpose of
implementing its principle of coercion.
Government should be described as an institution that SEEKS exclusive
power, not as one that HOLDS exclusive power. Just as a business is a
profit-seeking organization, not necessarily a profit-making organization.
* LIFE 63/Apr/13 The process of achieving values. Biochemically, life is
the process of achieving a temporary and local decrease in entropy by means
of chemical reactions which are controlled by nucleic acid molecules.
The definition of "A life" is the sum of the experiences and actions that
constitute a person's existence. The actual activities that you perform each
day define your life. You are what you think, what you say, and what you do.
* LIQUIDATION HPD-179 Normally, the sale of a property. With regard to
recessions and depressions it refers to the acceptance of losses and the
closing of businesses that existed only because of the miscalculations
caused by inflation.
* LOGIC The art of non-contradictory identification of the facts of
reality.
* LOVE 62/Jan/3 65/Aug/37 Man's emotional response to that which he
values. Desire is the consequence of love. PSE-129 Romantic Love is the
highest expression of the most intense union of pride and admiration. Its
celebration is sex. The psycho-somatic response to the integral of the
behaviors that make the shared ecstasy of sex possible.
* LUCK See Chapter 3.
See reference
* FREE MARKET: in which all economic endeavors are owned and controlled
by individuals acting according to their own choices.
"A free market is one in which all exchanges are voluntary."
This statement is not really true. The statement describes an ideal state
of affairs that cannot ever be completely achieved, since there will always
exist some people willing to coerce exchanges. What all men of good will DO
wish to achieve is the closest approximation to this ideal state of affairs
that is humanly possible. We do not expect the impossible; we do not assume
that in a free market the cost of using force is infinite.
* MARKET FAILURE: the inability of the (unfree) market to recover from an
attack of government intervention.
* MATURITY 65/Nov/53 Psychological maturity pertains to the successful
development of man's consciousness; the ability to conceptualize.
For an individualist, maturity pertains to that sort of cognitive
independence that begins when you are content to be right about something
without feeling a necessity to prove someone else to be wrong. And when you
decide not to waste your time by arguing with people who don't know what
they're talking about.
* MEASUREMENT IOE-13 The identification of a quantitative relationship by
means of a standard that serves as a unit.
* MEDIATION involves impartial third persons who help the parties in
dispute reach agreement. * ARBITRATION involves impartial persons who are
given authority to determine the outcome of the dispute. Mediators generally
work toward a compromise, but arbitrators reach decisions based on the
merits of the case. * ADJUDICATION is the clarification of existing property
rights.
* MEDIOCRITY WAR-67 85 AS-358 70/Oct/2 An average intelligence that
resents and envies its betters. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself;
it takes talent to recognize genius.
* MENTAL HEALTH 64/May/20 No clash between perception of reality and
preservation of self-esteem. 67/Feb/11 PSE-94 The capacity for unobstructed
cognitive functioning and the exercise of this capacity. Mental illness is
the impairment of this capacity.
* METAPHYSICS 65/Apr/16 The science that deals with the fundamental
nature of reality. DK The study of the fundamental nature of the universe
as epistemologically inferred rather than as existentially deduced.
Metaphyscs is not the science of any particular thing; it is the science
of everything. As such, it can have only very minimal principles because all
the details have to be discovered on their own, each being a matter of
scientific specialization.
* MIGHT MAKES RIGHT 63/Jun/21 When might is opposed to right the concept
of "might" can have only one meaning: the power of brute physical force
which in fact is not a "power" but the most hopeless state of impotence; it
is merely the "power" to destroy; it is the "power" of a stampede of animals
running amok.
* MINE To extract a resource that is not replenished. To harvest is to
extract a resource that you then replenish.
* MONEY HPD-10,12,15 A commodity accepted in exchange by an individual
who intends to trade it for something else. The final argument is that you
can always use the nails SOMETIME in the future; they won't lose their
value. And if YOU don't use them SOMEONE will. If the money commodity didn't
have a separate value you couldn't confidently accept it in trade for what
you have produced for you wouldn't know the worth of what you received.
Heinlein: The universal symbol for value received. DK: A medium for the
measured exchange of wealth.
* MONEY SUBSTITUTES Money receipts and demand deposits that are used in
exchanges in place of real money.
* MONOPOLY 62/Jun/23 A COERCIVE monopoly is a grant of special privilege
by the State reserving a certain area of production to one particular
individual or group--an exclusive control of a given field of production so
that those in control are able to set arbitrary production policies and
charge arbitrary prices, immune from the law of supply and demand. Such a
monopoly entails more than the absence of competition; it entails the
impossibility of competition. Every coercive monopoly that has ever existed
anywhere was created and made possible only by an act of government. A NON-
COERCIVE monopoly may exist on the free market but it is bound by the law of
supply and demand (such as a small town with one drug store which is barely
able to survive). No commodity can be indispensable to an economy regardless
of price. It can be only relatively preferable to other commodities.
* NATIONALISM A devotion to the social institutions of some particular
nation, often coupled with a desire that the favored nation should conquer
all other nations militarily, and always coupled with a degree of
indifference or even hostility to the social institutions of other nations.
* CITIZENSHIP An attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that
the whole is greater than the part and that the part should be willing to
sacrifice itself that the whole may live.
* NEED PSE-18 62/Mar/11 In order to maintain that something is a physical
or psychological need one must demonstrate that it is a causal condition of
the organism's survival and wellbeing.
* NEUROSIS DS 90 An attempt to protect one's self-esteem and preserve
one's survival by self-destructive means.
* PSYCHOSIS Basic5 Loss of volitional control over one's rational
judgment.
* NONSENSE See Chapter 3
See reference
* NOSTALGIA - commercial exploitation of a consensus that never existed.
* NUMBER IOE-58 A mental symbol that integrates units into a single
larger unit (or subdivides a unit into fractions) with reference to the
basic number of "one" which is the basic mental symbol of "unit."
* OBJECTIVE Basic1 Independent of consciousness. Reality is the OBJECT of
consciousness.
* OBJECTIVITY * OBJECTIVISM 65/Feb/7
Objectivity is, metaphysically, the recognition of the fact that reality
exists independent of any perceiver's consciousness. Epistemologically it is
the recognition of the fact that a perceiver's consciousness must acquire
knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain
rules (logic).
Objectivism is the intellectual process of correctly and consistently
applying the principle of objectivity to the world in general.
Objectivism can be considered as a generalization of the Scientific
Method, itself a subset of Objectivism, which is the process of applying
objectivity to the physical world specifically.
You start with objectivity - the belief that there is something out there
to learn about, something to be identified. Objectivism is the set of
techniques by which you apply your mind to learning about it. The reason
that Objectivism is not, and cannot ever be, a closed system, is that there
will always be more truths to be discovered, and human beings will always be
growing in intellectual power, thus always improving the intellectual
process by which we identify those truths.
* OBSCENITY 65/Oct/47 AS-901 A peculiar kind of embarrassment when
witnessing a grossly inappropriate human performance, such as the antics of
an unfunny comedian. It is a depersonalized, almost metaphysical
embarrassment at having to witness so undignified a behavior on the part of
a member of the human species. Lyndon Johnson's speeches were obscene.
* ORIGINAL SIN AS-1025 To hold as man's sin a fact not open to his choice
is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of
nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a
mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists
is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by
means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched.
* OWNERSHIP DK The rightfully acquired ability to use and dispose of
property. An individual justly owns whatever he has acquired without
violating the principles of justice in acquisition and justice in transfer.
* PROPERTY 64/Apr/13
Property is wealth produced or acquired without coercing others. Any
object which requires the application of human knowledge and action in order
to become of use to mankind, becomes property by virtue of (and by right of)
those who apply the knowledge and effort.
See Chapter 4 for a further discussion of property.
See reference
* PACKAGE DEAL - A "package-deal" is an attempt to dignify a bad concept
by allying it with something more honorable.
* PAPER MONEY HPD-179 Receipts for real money in storage.
* PATRIOTISM
I love America. It is true that I like much of the natural beauty of our
country, as well as the climates in many of its areas. But what loving
America really means is loving the American Dream. It means loving freedom
and individualism. It means admiring all of the millions of people who have
contributed both to the birth of the American Dream and to its furtherance.
It means admiring all people living today, both in America and throughout
the world, who passionately believe in the cause of human freedom. These
people cannot be distinguished by race, religious belief, nationality,
occupation or sex. They can be distinguished only by their common belief
that liberty must be accorded the highest of all social values.
From the moment our founders undertook their bold experiment in freedom,
people began to pour into our country by the millions in search of the
American Dream. Those millions of immigrants were not looking for government
handouts; they were looking for opportunity. The American Dream gave them
that opportunity. And the prosperity of America today is what they gave
back.
Ubi Libertas Ibi Patria.
* PERCEPTS VOS-19 IOE-11 A group of sensations automatically retained and
integrated by the brain. PSE-27 Through the stimulation of his various
sensory receptors man receives information which travels to his brain in the
form of sensations (primary sensory inputs). These sensory imputs as such do
not constitute knowledge; they are only the material of knowledge. Man's
brain automatically retains and integrates these sensations thereby forming
percepts. Percepts constitute the starting point and base of man's
knowledge: the direct awareness of entities, their actions and their
attributes.
* PERFECT - Feb81-3 Flawlessly complete satisfaction of a standard of
value. The best possible in a given context. A perfect sphere is a sphere
that is flawless in the context of man's form of perception. All concepts
are derived from the perceptual level of man's awareness, and all standards
of perfection must be consistent with this fact.
* PHILANTHROPY
There is reason to work for a better world even if we do not directly
benefit ourselves. Philanthropy is an investment in authentic human values--
an effort to leave a desirable social context for the survival of our
species in the future. It is an act of love and hope for our children, that
they may live in a proper world as they should.
* PHILOSOPHY FNI-18 An integrated view of life. FNI-22 An integrated
view of man, of existence, and of the universe. 70/Jun/4 The science that
studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, the fundamental,
universal principles of existence. DK A set of principles which provides a
consistent and comprehensive frame of reference from which to judge entities
and actions.
* PITY The Fountainhead 583 The awareness of a man without worth or hope.
A sense of finality; of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this
feeling--his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a
man and that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect.
* POLITICS 70/JUN/4 The study of the principles (and their
implementation) governing the organization of society.
* POWER - Power is the ability to influence the actions of other people.
It need not involve the use of coercion; people can be influenced by
economic, intellectual, or psychological means as well. The power residing
in leadership can be a legitimate object of concern for those whose primary
aim is cooperative ventures in productive achievement. Many enterprises
require large numbers of people to work together, over extended periods of
time, toward common goals. Ideally, cooperation springs from each
individual's autonomous commitment to the goal, and agreement about the
proper means of achieving that goal. But agreement and common commitment do
not occur by magic. They must be deliberately sought and maintained through
the use of the arts of power: the ability to persuade, to inspire, to
exercise authority, to build consensus and discourage factions. Wherever
possible, it is best to lead by persuasion, explaining the reasons for a
given course of action. But life does not always proceed at the pace of a
philosophy seminar. In a ship at sea in a storm, or in a time-critical
endeavor such as launching a spaceship, people must act together as a unit
under the command of a leader who does not have time to explain. Most
organizations require the exercise of such authority to some extent. The
point is that if one's goal requires the cooperation of others, it is
rational to seek the appropriate forms of power.
But the pursuit of power outside this context--the pursuit of power as an
end in itself, as a central value--is corrupt. The person who makes power
his central value sees life in terms of coercive relationships; he strives
constantly for dominance; he lives for the experience of running things,
being in charge, shaping the destiny of others. He never recognizes the
existence of an objective reality. His reality always lies within the minds
of other people--that's why he always regards success as being control over
other people rather than control over reality. Even if the means he employs
are physical, it is ultimately the consciousness of others that concerns
him: their willingness to obey, to submit, to give him the experience of
control. His power must be maintained by bribes and threats, so he must
cater to the hopes and fears of those he would control. In fact, therefore,
he is controlled by the contents of their consciousness, which take
precedence over his own perception of reality. As Gail Wynand discovered, "a
leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends."
* PRAGMATISM - The essence of pragmatism is its claim that costs and
benefits can be measured without the use of principles. That is why, as the
old joke says, pragmatism doesn't work. The pragmatist is someone who makes
a virtue out of a necessity. But necessity is the justification of tyrants,
and via pragmatism becomes the creed of slaves. The slave, in accepting
pragmatism, creates in his own mind justifications for his submissive
attitude.
* PRAXEOLOGY - the science of the basic motivations, nature and
consequences of human action. It implies that history is a logical continuum
rather than merely a chronological one. It accounts for and ranks the causal
forces at work in human history and provides a logical system for
anticipating their overlapping, often delayed effects.
* PRECEDENT Precedent is merely the assumption that somebody else, in the
past and with less information, nevertheless knows better than the man on
the spot. * TRADITION means doing things in the same grand style as your
predecessors; it does not mean doing the same things.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
* PRESTIGE - Prestige consists in the positive opinion of others, in
acceptance, approval, fame, honor, and status. Peter Keating is the
archetype of those for whom this value is central. Like those who live for
power, the Keatings live second-hand lives. Their primary business is to
discover and conform to the values, expectations, beliefs, wishes, and fears
of others, at the cost of their own independence.
The need to act on one's own independent judgment, however, does not
negate the fact that we are social animals and that most of our projects
involve interaction with others. Therefore it is legitimate to want
recognition of our accomplishments, as an expression of the fact that others
share our standards, that we are not living among zombies moved by alien
beliefs and values, that our social environment is intelligible. On a more
practical level, it is legitimate to defend one's reputation against libel,
slander, and other insults; and to cultivate one's reputation by devoting
some effort to making the relevant facts known to those whose judgment one
respects. Reputation is an asset that we earn by our past actions, and since
we live by trade with others, it is an important source of opportunities for
future gain--in all areas of our lives, not merely in our work.
* PRESUPPOSE - To require as an antecedent. You cannot hold concept A
(which presupposes concept B) unless you have first grasped concept B.
Presuppositions are propositions which must be true in order for the
statements which use them to make sense.
* PRIDE 67/May/9 PSE-220 AS-1020 The pleasure a man takes in himself on
the basis of and in response to specific achievements or actions. Self-
esteem is "I can do." Pride is "I have done."
* SELF-ESTEEM 64/May/17 67/Mar/1 67/Dec/1 It is the integrated sum of
self-confidence and self-respect. It is the conviction that one is competent
to live and worthy of living. Self-esteem is one's relationship with
oneself. AS-1057 Reliance on one's power to think. Pseudo self-esteem is a
false pretense at self-value.
Self-esteem is based on a sum of many conscious and subconscious
evaluations, which could be summarized in one universal conclusion: "I am
basically fit for life. I do not have to doubt that fact. I do not have to
test or renegotiate my worth every minute of my life." Self-esteem has three
components: pride in one's past, pleasure in one's present, and confidence
in one's future. They provide the individual with a certain inner calm and a
sense of control--the knowledge that the most important issues about himself
are settled and need not be continuously re-proven.
In contrast to the negative emotional metaphysics of a self-doubting
person, the individual who has settled the question of his worth will have a
benevolent sense of life--a positive psychological framework within which he
can approach life. In effect, he lives in a benevolent universe.
Having a certain level of self-esteem does not, of course, prevent a
person from experiencing self-doubt on occasion. No one is omniscient or
infallible. Most people will at one time or another be involved in actions
they may not be proud of. But any resulting self-doubt in such cases will
rarely be generalized to the person's total being.
* PRINCIPLE 64/Jan/1 A general truth on which other truths depend. The
fundamental distinguishing characteristic not of an object but of a set of
interconnected actions.
It is not the role of principle to provide particular explanations for
each individual truth or action, but to enable their discovery.
Philosophical principles do not provide the base of our knowledge in the
way that axioms do. They rest inductively on the very body of knowledge
which they integrate and explain. As a result, these principles are
contextual; they are not evidentially closed. They are subject to further
confirmation, qualification, or revision.
* PROBABILITY See Chapter 3
See reference
* PRODUCTIVENESS PSE-219 AS-1020 The act of bringing knowledge or goods
into existence. 65/Nov/52 Production is the application of reason to the
problem of survival. To combine your personal forces with the forces of
nature in such a way that the cooperation leads to some particular desired
arrangement of material. The transformation of naturally existing entities
into material that enables the achievement of human values. The result of
this act is * WEALTH
* PROFIT The result of helping yourself (which entails self-
responsibility). Those who hate profit hate the idea of self-betterment.
They are anti-life.
* PROOF Basic3 A process of inference. It establishes that a proposition
is true by deriving it from previous knowledge. The demonstration of a
correspondence between an idea and an observed fact. The process of tracing
an idea back to the data provided by the senses. A good proof is a step-by-
step process that cannot be broken down into smaller steps and in which each
step follows from the previous one.
See Chapter 3 * Concept Reduction See reference
The validity of the senses is an axiom. Like the fact of consciousness,
the axiom is outside the province of proof because it is a precondition of
any proof. Just as any attack on consciousness negates itself, so does any
attack on the senses. If the senses are not valid, neither are any concepts,
including the ones used in the attack.
Historical events are validated through a convergence of evidence from
numerous lines of inquiry - multiple, independent inductions, all of which
point to an unmistakable conclusion. This process is a "consilience of
inductions." That which is proved lies at the point of convergence of all
our arrows of explanation. Evolution, for example, is proved by the
convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology,
biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology,
genetics, and many more. No single discovery from any of these fields
constitutes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life changed
through time in a certain sequence by a particular process. Evolution is a
fact so overwhelmingly established that it has become irrational to call it
merely a theory.
"Validation" is a broader term than "proof." It means any process of
establishing an idea's derivation from reality, whether deductive reasoning,
inductive reasoning, or perceptual observation. In this sense, one can and
must validate every item of knowledge, including axioms, even though a
philosophic axiom cannot be proved, because it is one of the bases of proof.
(But for the same reason it cannot be escaped, either.)
* PROPOSITION 67/Jun/7 A combination of concepts. A proposition is a
complete thought; a proposition is to a sentence as a concept is to a word.
* PRUDE - A prude believes that his esthetic preferences, or his trained-
in prejudices, are laws of nature.
* PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY 64/Oct/41 The study of the mental operations that
are possible to and that characterize man's cognitive behavior. 69/Jul/4
The study of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic
functions of the subconscious. WAR-154 One's method of using his
consciousness and considering intellectual issues. PSE pg93 The study of
the nature of, and the relationship between, the conscious, goal-setting,
self-regulatory operations of the mind, and the subconscious, automatic
operations.
* PSYCHOLOGICAL VISIBILITY PSE-186 67/Dec/6 PRL-77 Man needs the
experience of self-awareness that results from perceiving his self as an
objective existent. He is able to achieve this experience through
interaction with the consciousness of other living entities. As for social
metaphysicians it is not visibility they seek from others but identity.
* PSYCHOLOGIZING 71/Mar/1 - Condemning, excusing, or "explaining"
someone's behavior on the grounds of their (invented) psychological state,
in the absence of or contrary to factual evidence. A psychologizer not
merely invades the privacy of his victims' minds, he claims to understand
their minds better than they do, to know more than they do about their own
motives. He ascribes to his victims any motivation that suits his purpose,
ignoring their denials. The intent of the psychologizer is to undercut your
self-confidence, your self-esteem, even the basic rationality of your
cognitive functioning.
* PSYCHOLOGY PSE-3,5 The science that studies the attributes and
characteristics which certain living organisms possess by virtue of being
conscious. The science that studies the attributes and characteristics which
man possesses by virtue of his rational faculty.
* RACISM 63/Sep/33 The notion of ascribing moral, social or political
significance to a man's genetic lineage. The notion that a man's
intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by
his internal body chemistry. The belief that a man is to be judged not by
his own character and actions but by the characters and actions of a
collective of his ancestors.
* RATIONALIZE Basic6 To pick some random explanation to justify one's
feelings and stick to it regardless of reason, logic, evidence or argument.
Think 6 To attempt to justify conclusions that have already been accepted on
the basis of one's feelings.
* REASON 62/Jan/3 62/Mar/11 The faculty that perceives, identifies and
integrates the evidence of reality provided by man's senses. PSE-4 Man's
ability to extend the range of his awareness beyond the perceptual concretes
immediately confronting him. PSE-5 To project a chain of inference that is
independent of immediate sensory stimuli.
Reason is the faculty that organizes perceptual units in conceptual terms
by following the principles of logic. This formulation highlights the three
elements essential to the faculty: its data, percepts; its form, concepts;
its method, logic.
* RATIONAL 65/Dec/55 Derived from the facts of reality and validated by a
process of reason.
* RATIONALITY PSE-219 The unreserved commitment to the perception of
reality, to the acceptance of reason as an absolute--as one's only guide to
knowledge, values and action.
* RECESSION HPD-179 The liquidation period following an inflation.
* REDUCTION Dec86-4 The means of connecting an abstract concept to
reality by traveling backwards through the hierarchical logical structure
involved in the formation of that concept.
* REFERENCES See Chapter 3
See reference
* REFLEX PSE-22 An automatic involuntary action which occurs as a
consequence of a stimulus to a receptor. It does not involve the faculty of
consciousness.
* RELIGION A system of beliefs and practices resting on the assumption
that events within the world are subject to some supernatural powers, such
that human needs can be satisfied by man's entering into relations with such
powers. The supernatural powers in question are called supernatural by
virtue of the fact that they can be known, related to, or influenced
primarily by means other than those of reason or sense experience. The
fundamental characteristic of all religions is this belief in a supernatural
power which can control everyday events. And a fundamental practice
characteristic of all religions is the attempt to influence this power.
* REPRESSION 66/Aug/8 A subconscious mental process that forbids entry
into conscious awareness of certain ideas, memories, identifications and
evaluations. An automatized avoidance reaction.
* REVENGE
It is often said that the best revenge is to live well. But this is only
one-fourth of the subject:
The good revenge is to live well.
The better revenge is to live well, at your enemy's expense.
A still better revenge is to live well, at your enemy's expense--in such
a way that he never knows what you have done. (Or do so in such a way that
even if he does know, there is nothing he can do about it.)
The final step of revenge is to live well with his knowing and willing
cooperation.
* REVOLUTION A violent transfer of power from one faction to another
faction within the same class is called a coup, but this changes nothing. A
transfer of power from one class to another is called a revolution, and this
does change things--although the changes are not necessarily the ones the
revolutionaries sought. Revolutions are always violent, for tyrants will
always kill to retain power.
* RIGHTEOUSNESS - Those for whom virtue is a global value see life in
essentially moral terms. For a person of this type, the most important thing
is to be a good person, to have a good character, to know that he has done
the right thing--to be righteous. This attitude is explicitly endorsed by
religious codes of ethics, according to which the purpose of this life is
the purification of the soul through the acquisition of virtue. But there
are many secular versions as well, such as the insistence on "politically
correct" forms of speech as a sign of egalitarian purity. Indeed, any code
of ethics, including Objectivism, can provide the context for virtue as a
central value.
The problem with this outlook is that virtue is not in fact its own
reward. Virtue consists in the rules of conduct, the traits of character,
that are required for living successfully. To make virtue one's highest end
is to focus inward, forgetting that the purpose of virtue is to help us to
live in the world. Virtue becomes a matter of duty rather than the effect of
actions. Such people tend to become crabbed and cautious, more concerned
with avoiding moral errors than with achieving any values. Because we are
beings of self made soul, because our character is itself a crucial
achievement, virtue ought to be a source of satisfaction in its own right--
and a matter of concern in any action we take. But it nevertheless must take
second place to achievement as a global value.
* RIGHTS 62/Feb/7 63/Apr/13 63/Jun/21 64/Apr/13 64/May/19 VOS-97 AS-1061
WAR-43 See Chapter 5.
See reference
Rights are the conditions of social existence required by man's nature
for his proper survival.
* RIGHT TO WORK LAWS 63/Jun/23 Forbid employers and unions from
contractually agreeing to an all-union workplace.
* RITUAL - a prescribed meaningless ceremonial activity usually performed
in groups to reinforce an illusion of unanimous acquiescence. Thus is
substituted hypnotic behavior for chosen self-originated thoughts and
actions. Your individuality softens; your thought is no longer clear and
logical; you start granting some probability to absurd claims. Then those
claims come to have social consequences when large groups insist on enacting
them into law. The groups may subsequently proceed in almost any direction.
The mighty river of legislation begins in these tiny trickles, which
themselves condense out of faint clouds of mental fog.
* ROMANTICISM 69/May/1 WAR-73 A category of art based on the recognition
of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition.
* SACRIFICE
There is an important distinction to be made between a sacrifice and a
price.
A sacrifice is the willful and knowing surrender of a higher value in
favor of a lower value or of a non-value. When you make a sacrifice you are
moving downwards in your value hierarchy.
A price is a value you are willing to relinquish in order to gain a
higher value. When you pay a price for something you are moving upwards in
your value hierarchy.
But bear in mind that you are neither omniscient nor infallible. When you
engage in a value exchange, it may turn out that you have mistakenly given
up a higher value for a lesser value. In this case, rather than making a
profit, you have taken a loss. But this kind of loss is NOT a sacrifice.
* SCHIZOPHRENIA Basic6 The inability to hold the mind focused on a single
purpose. No logical relationship between one thought and the next.
Definition by non-essentials. DS-128 Oriented exclusively to the internal
world of personal experience and disconnected from the external world. Said
of Buckminster Fuller's speech: non-linear endless improvisation. Meander
mind.
* ANACOLUTHON - Stutter speech. A syntactical inconsistency or
incoherence within a sentence.
* SCIENCE PSE-2 The rational and systematic study of the facts of
reality. Physics discovers what is; engineers use this knowledge to create
things that have never been.
* SELFISHNESS
Concern with one's own well-being.
The most selfish of all things is the independent mind that recognizes no
authority higher than its own and no value higher than its judgment of truth.
See CHAPTER 1 See reference
* SENSATION VOS-18 The product of the automatic reaction of a sense organ
to a stimulus from the outside world.
* SENSE OF LIFE 65/Mar/10 A pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics. A
subconsciously integrated appraisal of man's nature and the nature of
reality, summing up one's view of man's relationship to existence. 66/Feb/1
The integrated sum of man's basic values.
* SERVICE 63/Mar/12 Work offered for trade on a free market to be paid
for by those who choose to buy it. The altruist definition is: unrewarded
self-sacrificial unilateral giving while receiving nothing in return.
* SHODDY A shoddy item is one of poor quality or inferior craftsmanship.
Similarly, a shoddy person is one who has created a poorly crafted self. One
way to recognize such people is that they usually make only half-hearted
attempts to partially fulfil their obligations.
* SIMILARITY IOE-18 The relationship between two or more existents which
possess the same characteristic(s) but in different degrees.
* SMUGGLING - Unpublicized trips across national borders to engage in
free trade.
* SOCIAL METAPHYSICS 65/Feb/5 PSE-Chapter10 The psychological syndrome
that characterizes an individual who holds the consciousnesses of other men,
not objective reality, as his ultimate frame-of-reference. For the social
metaphysician, the content of other people's minds IS reality, thus social
metaphysics is a state of psycho-epistemological dependency.
* SOCIAL SYSTEM 65/Nov/54 A set of ethical-political-economic principles
embodied in a society's laws and institutions which determine the terms of
association among the people living in a given geographical area.
* System - (as in "beat the system") This is a relative term which has a
different meaning for different people. It usually refers to those aspects
of my social environment that interfere with my personal life.
* SOCIALISM 62/Dec/53 65/May/19 A theory or system of social organization
which advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of
production--capital, land etc.--in the community "as a whole." (See the
Ambiguous Collective fallacy.)
See reference
* FASCISM * COMMUNISM see Chapter 4
See reference
* SOCIETY 62/Feb/7 For a New Liberty pg37 A number of individual men who
live in the same geographical area and who interact with one another.
Society is not a separate entity endowed with some sort of autonomous
existence apart from the individual men of whom it is composed. Society as
such does not exist; only the individual men exist.
63/Apr/14 A civilized society is one in which coercion is banned from
human relationships. A Police State, on the other hand, is one in which the
police can do with legal immunity what would be criminal if done by an
ordinary citizen.
* SOUL 66/FEB/3 A mind and its basic values. Aristotle: The inner
meaning of the body's movement. See AS-858 for a discussion of the Soul-
Body dichotomy.
* SOVEREIGNTY The personal prerogative to determine your own values,
actions, goals, thoughts and convictions. The right to live your own life
according to your own judgments, choices, and decisions.
* SPIRITUALITY The reverence one feels at the sight of a great
accomplishment. The value a person places on the symbolic expression of the
importance of purpose in human life.
* STANDARD vs. PURPOSE See Chapter 3
See reference
* SUBCONSCIOUS The content of your mind that you are not focused on at
any given moment. It is simply a repository for information acquired in the
past and conclusions that your mind has formed about that information. The
subconscious does perform certain important processes, but they are not in
any way mystical or non-rational (even though they may be sometimes
nonsensical). The conscious mind is always able to determine what they are
and to correct them if necessary. Intuition, revelation, sudden insight and
emotions are the expression of conclusions fed by the subconscious mind to
the conscious mind.
The subconscious can, through the process of automatization, be a
repository of habits which have been learned well enough that they no longer
need to be wilfully attended to. It is an error to suppose that we should
cultivate the practice of always thinking about what we are doing. Cognitive
competence advances by extending the number of important operations which we
can perform without thinking about them. Only by automatizing much of our
behavior can we free our minds for the implementation of new ideas.
Evolution has automatized much neural processing by incorporating it into
subconscious circuitry.
* SUBJECTIVE Basic1 Dependent on consciousness. Reality is the SUBJECT of
consciousness.
* SUBJECTIVISM 63/Jun/21 65/Feb/7 The belief that reality is not a firm
absolute but a fluid indeterminate realm which can be altered in whole or in
part by the consciousness of the perceiver i.e. by his feelings, wishes or
whims. Pure subjectivism does not recognize the concept of identity i.e. the
fact that man or the universe or anything possesses a specific nature.
* TAUTOLOGY 67/May/13 Analytic truths represent concrete instances of the
Law of Identity therefore are tautologies--propositions that repeat the same
thing: 2+2=4.
* TAX - property coercively taken from its owner by a government.
* TELEOLOGY IOE-34 The study of goal-directed behavior.
* THINK PSE-38 39 A man is in focus when and to the extent that his mind
is set to the goal of awareness, clarity, and intelligibility with regard to
the object of his concern. To sustain that focus with regard to a specific
issue or problem is to think. To be in focus is to set one's mind to the
purpose of active cognitive integration. To focus is to move from a lower
level of awareness to a higher level. To be in focus means that one must
know what one's conscious mind is doing. AS-1038 The process of defining
identity and discovering causal connections. Leonard Reed: when you shut
your mouth and your head begins talking to itself.
* THINKING IN PRINCIPLES Jun87-6 To abstract the essence of a series of
concretes, then identify, by an appropriate use of logic, the necessary
implications or results of this essence. You thereby reach a fundamental
generalization, a Principle, which subsumes an unlimited number of instances
and enables you to deal with them.
* TIME 62/May/19 Time is a measurement of motion. Motion presupposes
entities that move. If nothing existed there could be no time. Time is "in"
the universe; the universe is not "in" time. See "On The Electrodynamics of
Moving Bodies" Part 1 for Einstein's view of simultaneity.
To grasp the concept of Motion you have to grasp a change of spatial
relationships among entities. If you see some stationary objects and one
object that is moving, you grasp the fact that it is moving by seeing the
changed relationship between it and the other objects, and that gives you
the concepts of Time and Space.
Aristotle on Time:
Time is not movement, but only movement in so far as it admits of
enumeration. Time is the measure of motion. One might also raise the
question what sort of movement time is the number of. Must we not say 'of
any kind'? For things both come into being in time and pass away, and grow,
and are altered in time, and are moved locally; thus it is of each movement
qua movement that time is the number. And so it is simply the number of
continuous movement, not of any particular kind of it.
* TIME DEPOSIT HPD-180 The lending of your money to a bank not to be
available for a specified period of time for which you receive a fee
(interest).
* TO BE See Chapter 3
See reference
* TOLERANCE David Kelley: The core meaning of tolerance is "to endure,
allow, or put up with something." This core meaning involves two essential
elements: a) The object of tolerance--that which we tolerate--must be
something with a negative value significance, something wrong, false,
dangerous, painful, etc. b) To tolerate this object is to forebear from
taking some action against it, to forebear from opposing, removing, or
condemning it. Where these conditions do not obtain, the concept is not
applicable. In particular, if something has a positive value significance,
then there is nothing to tolerate. We do not endure or put up with the good,
the true, the beautiful; we actively embrace them. Even if something is of
neutral significance, neither good for us nor bad, there is nothing to
tolerate; there is no action of opposing, removing, or condemning it from
which we need to forebear.
Today, tolerance is grounded chiefly on the premise of relativism: the
doctrine that there is no objective basis for judging people as good or bad,
ideas as true or false, cultures as primitive or advanced. For the anti-
conceptual mentality, relativism is the only possible alternative to tribal
prejudice because for him the refusal to judge is the only alternative to
judging by concrete-bound criteria. If one does not think in terms of
principles, one has no way of distinguishing those aspects of human conduct
and character that are essential from those aspects that are optional.
There is nothing for a white person to tolerate in one whose skin is
black, because skin color has no value significance whatever.
An exception to the toleration of false ideas is the case of a person who
explicitly chooses to abandon reason as his means of arriving at his ideas.
Such a person is not, obviously, reachable by reason, and should be shunned.
Toleration is not a virtue in itself, as is illustrated by a man who
tolerates explicit opponents of liberty on the premise that such toleration
is virtuous. He should not only be shunned, he should be fought!
* TOTALITARIANISM - The deliberate use of institutionalized coercion.
* TRADE is an exchange of wealth in a context from which coercion and the
threat of coercion are absent. The alternative is theft.
* UNIT IOE-12 An existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two
or more similar members. Things viewed by a consciousness in certain
existing relationships.
* UNREAL AS-1017 That negation of existence which is the content of a
human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason.
* VALUE - That which one acts to gain and/or keep.
There is a heirarchical relationship among all of man's values. That is,
the value which is the end of one action becomes the means for the
achievement of another wider value. As for instance the consumption of bread
is the end or goal of the activity of farming. But that consumption is the
means of achieving another wider value - one's survival. The ultimate values
are the maintenance of life and its enjoyment.
(See "The Objectivist Ethics" and AS-1018 for a presentation of the
supreme values of Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem.)
* VIRTUE 67/Mar/4 AS-1012 1018 The action by which one gains and keeps a
value.
* VIBES DK Good vibes are what you feel when your perceptions correspond
to your mental construct of what an enjoyable situation should be. Bad vibes
denote a dissonance.
* VOLUNTARY See Chapter 6
See reference
* VOLUNTARISM The essence of volunteer work is that people are not
forced to do something they don't like. Instead they willingly contribute to
activities which are important to them. Real people have real human needs
like food, shelter, and caring. When the "official" system fails to provide
these needs, individual people step in and do it voluntarily. Though this
work is valueless in the official economy, it is some of the most important
work done in the community. In fact, volunteer work is universally
beneficial to the common good. Somehow, people just don't seem to volunteer
to build bomb factories. Instead, they volunteer to do such things as feed
the hungry, build houses, care for the sick and elderly, teach children, and
clean up neighborhoods.
* WHIM VOS-14 A desire experienced by a person who does not know and does
not care to discover its cause.
* WHY - OPAR4 What is the nature of the cause of this phenomenon? "How"
means: What is the process underlying this phenomenon?
* WISDOM - The intelligent application of one's knowledge. Wisdom is a
concomitant of both intelligence and education and is, to at least some
extent, an acquired rather than an innate characteristic. Its existence in a
person is in large measure a function of the philosophical principles that
underlie all of the person's mental activities.
The ability to hear what people mean rather than just what they say.
Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest person in a
given group.
To a fool time brings only age, not wisdom.
* STUPIDITY vs * FOOLISHNESS
Stupidity results from the inability to think.
Foolishness results from not acting in accordance with one's value
hierarchy. Or from acting in conflict with it.
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