Osborne’s Criticism of
the Argument from Existence
Background
In October 2001, I published a formal presentation of my “argument from the
fact of existence,” and to date I have seen few attempts to refute it. The
most serious attempt that I know of is Philip Osborne’s Ayn Rand’s Atheological Argument, which was published
in 2002. Since its publishing, numerous readers of my website have written to
inquire whether I had seen Osborne’s rejoinder to my argument (which I
affectionately call “AFE”), and if I had any reaction of my own to publish in
response to Osborne. I had, in fact, seen Osborne’s paper early on (probably
not long after it was published), examined it, and even wrote several pages of
notes which I had intended to edit down and finally publish on my own site. However,
due to the usual time constraints, bigger priorities and even laziness, I never
did finish my reply to Osborne’s rebuttal.
Recently a Christian reader of my website contacted me, and
again I was asked whether I had a response to Osborne. With a heavy sigh, I
originally intended to brush it off and promise that it’ll be up there “one
day.” But this time I chose instead to make good on what I had promised myself
well before this: to produce a thorough response to Osborne’s rebuttal of my
AFE and publish it on my website. So I changed all my plans for the evening and
sat down and peeled through Osborne’s paper completely afresh, not referring
back to my earlier notes, and sculpted a thorough reply in one sitting. This I
sent to my inquiring visitor who later said he “believe[s he] did read it,” but
that he “may have accidentally deleted it” when I asked for his thoughts about
it. I suppose even atheologists have to lump
occasional ingratitude these days. Nonetheless, what I present below is an
edited version of what I sent to my inquiring visitor.
Osborne’s paper actually rebuts two arguments that I have
published on my website. Taking only one of my arguments to task would have
been compliment enough. In addition to AFE, Osborne also interacts with an
argument that I presented in my Letters to a
Young Atheologist series, specifically Letter 6: God
and Pure Self-Reference. While I think Osborne’s attempts to refute both
arguments fail, I will only examine his interaction with AFE in the present
paper. Should time avail itself, I’ll be happy to publish at a later time my
response to the points Osborne raises against the argument from pure
self-reference (which Osborne dubs “the argument from consciousness”).
Osborne on the Argument from the Fact of Existence
Among the more obvious points to make in response to Osborne's paper, I would
first note that he's not actually interacting with my argument, even though he
cites my presentation of it as a primary source. The argument he throws up
before himself is the following:
1. If God exists, then the primacy
of consciousness is true.
2. It is not the case that the primacy
of consciousness is true.
3. Hence, it is not the case that
God exists. (Modus tollens, from 1, 2)
Contrast this with the argument I
present on my site:
Premise 1: If the primacy of consciousness is
invalid, then the claim that God exists is false.
Premise 2: The primacy of consciousness is
invalid.
Conclusion: Therefore, the claim that God
exists is false.
This is a significant difference, one which Osborne
apparently misses. Where the argument with which Osborne interacts concerns
whether or not “God” exists, my argument shows why the knowledge claim
that “God exists” cannot be accepted as true, principally because it assumes
an invalid metaphysical basis – namely the primacy of consciousness view of
reality. While no one has an onus to prove that the non-existent does not
exist, one can show that claims such as “God exists” are false on account of
the fact that they assume a false metaphysics. It is this latter approach that
my argument takes. Claims that God exists thus fail to warrant the rationality
needed to take them seriously.
Since the argument which I present is formally valid, there
are basically two ways to attack it. One way is to challenge the first premise,
arguing that the claim that God exists can still be true even if the primacy of
consciousness is invalid. The other way is to deny the premise that the primacy
of consciousness is invalid. The approach which Osborne chooses in his rebuttal
is more in line with the former than with the latter, essentially arguing that
the primacy of existence does not rule out the notion that a god exists. Along
the way, however, Osborne makes numerous minor errors which collectively impact
his understanding of the argument from existence even more negatively. For
instance, Osborne says that
the central idea of the Objectivist atheological argument is the dichotomy between the “primacy
of existence” and the “primacy of consciousness.”
The central idea behind AFE is not simply that the primacy
of consciousness and the primacy of existence are opposed to one another, but that the idea of God presumes the primacy of
consciousness and that the primacy of consciousness is metaphysically invalid. The
central idea, in other words, is that god-belief is false because it philosophically
rests on a false metaphysics. I have provided ample support for the premise
that god-belief assumes the metaphysical primacy of consciousness in my
presentation of AFE. And – and this is important – even though Osborne’s
rebuttal seeks to deny that the notion of God assumes the primacy of
consciousness, he does not raise any challenge to the exhibits that I produce
in defense of this premise.
It is important to point out here that, in any scrutable case, a knowledge claim performatively
presumes the opposite principle, namely the primacy of existence principle –
even those knowledge claims which are false, mistaken or even arbitrary, and even
if the speaker does not fully understand this. This is because, when one makes
a serious pronouncement about the world, he does not, for instance, assume that
his claim is true simply because he wishes that it’s true. Nor does he
typically suppose that things would be different if he wanted them to change. As
I point out in Note
2.I.B.1.:
The distinction between the things
that exist and the faculty of perceiving that which exists is the basis of the
concept 'objectivity' and gives rise to the objective, hierarchical nature of
knowledge. That we can identify the fact that knowledge is hierarchical in
nature confirms the far-reaching relevance of the distinction between existence
and consciousness.
If I were writing my argument today, however, I would
elaborate on the fundamental necessity of the primacy of existence principle in
knowledge in Premise 2.II. However, readers should note that, in Note
2.I.C.1., I do point the reader to another article of mine, The
Issue of Metaphysical Primacy, which deals more directly with this
relationship. I would also point out that an attempt to affirm the opposite –
namely the position that knowledge assumes the primacy of consciousness –
amounts to affirming a position philosophically akin to the view that “wishing
makes it true.” Not even most theists will explicitly affirm that wishing makes
it true, and yet in terms of essentials this is the ultimate foundational
premise of their worldview – that reality conforms to some conscious activity,
such as wishing (e.g., the Christian god wished the universe into existence). All
this is to say that there’s more at stake, according to the fundamental
principles informing AFE, than merely siding on one or the other horn of a
dichotomy. In fact, the issue is whether one’s claims have their basis in
reality (the primacy of existence), or in fantasy (the primacy of
consciousness).
Osborne interprets the primacy of existence to mean:
“’existence’
(which I will take to mean the actual world, which I will call ‘@’) holds ‘primacy’
(is ontologically independant of) consciousness.”
It’s important at this point to keep in mind that
consciousness also exists, that it is part of the actual world; it is just as
real as rivers, photosynthesis and digestion. This point, which is unmistakably
affirmed in the Objectivist literature, is often ignored or misunderstood by
Objectivism’s detractors. I’m not accusing Osborne of doing this, but if he is
not careful, he very well may fall prey to this common error. The concern here
is that we should not dichotomize existence and consciousness against one
another, as if they were two opposites which cannot be integrated or must be
reconciled due to intervening differences. Consciousness is an attribute
belonging to a specific class of entities, namely living organisms
(specifically those living organisms which have evolved a faculty of
awareness). The issue which
Osborne’s approach to critiquing his rendition of the
argument is to grant the assumption that the primacy of existence and the
primacy of consciousness are jointly exhaustive metaphysics (in Note
2.I.B.3. I link to this article which
defends this position), as well as the assumption that the primacy of existence
is true. He believes that he can dispel the argument by showing that God does
not assume or imply the primacy of consciousness metaphysics, that God is
compatible with the primacy of existence metaphysics. Thus he wants to attack
his rendition’s first premise, namely:
If God exists, then the primacy of
consciousness is true.
To follow this approach, he states that
“part of the problem in
understanding it is that it is difficult to understand what sense of ‘dependance’ the Objectivist means when he says that theism
supposes @ to be ‘dependant’ upon God.”
It is not clear, however, why this would be difficult for
anyone who has examined my argument to grasp. In fact, it seems that anyone
familiar with my presentation of AFE would have to deliberately ignore examples
which I give in defense of the premise that the idea of God assumes or reduces
to the primacy of consciousness in order to take the approach Osborne is about
to deploy. For instance, in Premise 1.II.B.2.b.,
I list three examples of what I mean by this:
i.
God
is said to have created the universe (i.e., existence) through an act of will.
ii.
God
can change A into non-A (i.e., alter the identity of entities) through an act
of will.
iii.
God
can make A perform the action of non-A (i.e., alter the causal nature of
entities) through an act of will.
So we have three species of dependence of @ on a form of
consciousness, namely creation of existence by an act of will (e.g.,
“wishing” things into reality), changing an object into something it’s not by
an act of will (e.g., “commanding” water to become wine), making an
object perform the action of something it is not by an act of will
(e.g., enabling men to walk on water, or fish and loaves of bread to magically
multiply). But curiously, in his critique, Osborne ignores my point that “a
will is a form of consciousness” (Premise 1.II.B.2.b.vi.)
and examines the argument from the erroneous assumption that consciousness is restricted
exclusively to perception alone. He makes this clear when he tries to sort out
the “difficulty” he mentions above with the following interpretation:
It seems plausible to me that he
means it is perceptually dependant.
Nowhere in my version of the argument do I define the
primacy of consciousness to mean merely “perceptually dependant.” To correct
this, I can spell it out quite easily: the primacy of consciousness holds that
existence (specifically, the objects of consciousness) depends in one way
or another on some form or activity of consciousness (such as a will,
which I specifically mention in my own examples) for their existence, identity,
activity, ability, etc. I don’t want to accuse Osborne of sleight of hand, but
if his critique is guilty of it, it’s most guilty of it on this point.
He explains what he means by “perceptually dependant” as follows:
For instance, one might say that
reality is constituted by our perception of it; for example, this essay comes
into existence when you start reading it, and no longer exists when you stop,
because it is a product of your mind. This seems consistent with Objectivist
statements, regarding the primacy of consciousness:
It may be consistent with what Objectivism states
about the primacy of consciousness (for perception is a form of consciousness,
among other things), but it is not exhaustive of the manner in which
this fundamental error can be committed. Other instances would also constitute
expressions of the primacy of consciousness, such as:
a) This essay comes into existence
when:
· You start to think about it
· You hope it exists
· You fear that it exists
· You wish that it exists
· You command it to exist
· You believe it exists, etc.
b) This essay goes out of existence
if
· You think it should
· You hope it does
· You’re afraid it will
· You believe it will
· You want it to
· You deny its existence, etc.
c) This essay says something other
than it does say because
· You want it to say something
else
· You want others to believe it
says something else
· You imagine it says something
else
· You pretend it says something
else
· You believe it says something
else
· You forgot what it really
says, etc.
In each case, we have a form or activity of consciousness other
than perception which is given primacy over its objects. It would constitute
a failure of cognition to suppose that “perceptual dependence” constitutes the
primacy of consciousness while maintaining that these other examples do not. In
terms of fundamentals, all these examples are species of the same reversal of
the relationship between consciousness and its objects, which means: all are
expressions of the same basic error.
So Osborne’s critique seeks to undermine the argument by
arbitrarily restricting consciousness merely to perception, thus ignoring expressions
of the primacy of consciousness which incorporate other forms or activities of
consciousness, even those specified in my version of the argument he’s trying
to critique. To the degree that his rebuttal does this, it mischaracterizes
AFE.
To support his construal of the primacy of consciousness as
being restricted merely to an issue of “perceptual dependence,” Osborne quotes
two passages from my essay The
Issue of Metaphysical Primacy. But neither of these statements, nor any
other statements in that or any other essay that I have written, affirms that
perception is the only form or activity of consciousness. But this is
what he would need if he was going to substantiate the construal of the primacy
of consciousness which his critique’s approach utilizes as a viable criticism
of AFE. He also paraphrases
Consciousness is the faculty which
perceives that which exists.
But this statement, too, in no way restricts consciousness
to perception and only perception. Consciousness is indeed the faculty
which perceives that which exists, but it is also the faculty which performs
other operations, such as differentiating objects, selectively focusing on one or
a group of objects in the midst of many, omitting measurements, forming basic
concepts and higher abstractions, inferring, remembering, emoting, daydreaming,
pondering, wishing, fantasizing, etc. Rand makes this explicitly clear in her
essay “For the New Intellectual” (in her book of the same title, cf. pp. 14-15)
where she points out that human beings share their consciousness with animals
at the levels of sensations and perceptions, but are capable of much beyond
these that animals are not capable of (she focused mainly on man’s conceptual
ability). What we find in Osborne’s critique of Objectivist atheology,
then, is that it relies heavily on the fallacy which
So Osborne is wrong to say:
This seems to be what Objectivists
mean when they say that God-belief violates fundamental axioms; the only
relation which consciousness can enter into with reality is one of perception...
Perception per se is not a “relation... with reality”;
rather it is an activity of an organism which possesses at least the
perceptual level of consciousness. To correct Osborne, Objectivism holds that
the only relation which consciousness can enter into with reality is that
identified by the primacy of existence: the objects of
consciousness hold metaphysical primacy over the subject of consciousness
(hence “Objectivism”). Anyone can recognize the truth in this by isolating
various activities of consciousness and checking whether or not the objects involved
in those activities conform to those activities. Does your perception of
a lemon cause it to exist or be a lemon as opposed to something else (like a
mushroom or automobile)? Obviously not. Does your wish
that your electric bill for a month in the deep cold of winter stay below
$100.00 make it stay below $100.00? No – you can wish all you want, but you
still owe $180.00 all the same. Does thinking that it’s really March and
not November make it March? No, it doesn’t. Does longing for a long lost
friend restore the years you didn’t enjoy with him? No, those years when he was
present in your life are gone, and they will not change because you longed for
him. Etc. Reality is what it is, regardless of what we think, feel, wish or
prefer to be the case. That’s essentially what the primacy of existence
principle is recognizing. Religion, however, enshrines an imaginary being which
is supposedly not bound to this orientation between subject and object, but
allegedly enjoys its reversal – that the objects of its consciousness conform
to what it thinks, feels, wishes, or prefers to be the case. Thus religion
assumes the primacy of consciousness metaphysics.
Osborne’s attempts to interpret the primacy of existence
through the filter of analytic philosophy, however, has a strong potential to
confuse matters, especially since he proceeds on the erroneous basis that the
Objectivist conception of consciousness is restricted merely to perception. He
thus presents the primacy of existence as he understands it in the form of a
symbolic proposition:
For all x,
if x is a member of @, then for any property F which x has, x has F whether or
not any individual y enters into relation R with x.
Osborne stipulates that R “denote[s] a perceptual
relationship,” such that “Rxy is true just in case x
perceives y.” Though this is not entirely clear, I interpret the above
statement to say something along the lines of:
For any thing, if that thing
is a member of the world of things (i.e., if it exists), then for any property
that this thing has, this thing has that property whether or not any conscious
individual perceives that thing.
Let’s plug a concrete object in for “x” and see if it bears out.
For any lemon, if that lemon
is a member of the world of things (i.e., if it exists), then the fact that it
has mass is a property of that lemon whether I perceive that lemon or not.
So for any lemon which actually exists, why would I suppose
that it does not have mass if I do not perceive it? Similarly, however,
why would I suppose that it does not have mass if I wished that it did
not have mass? Or, why would I suppose that any particular lemon does not have
mass if I am not aware that it exists? Indeed, I acknowledge the primacy
of existence, so I recognize that lemons are what they are independent of any
activity of my consciousness, whether it be merely
perceiving, or knowing, thinking, feeling, wishing, denying, evading, ignoring,
forgetting, preferring, etc. Given his construal of the primacy of existence,
however, Osborne would have it that this relationship obtains only in the case
of perception.
In response to this propositional formulation which Osborne
concocts, he says that he “will take the truth of this proposition to be a
sufficient condition for the truth of primacy of existence metaphysics.” This
reading constitutes a reversal which we can expect an advocate of analytic
philosophy to endorse in uncritical haste. Propositions (regardless of
their truth value) are not a sufficient condition for proper orientation between
a consciousness and its objects; quite the opposite is the case: the proper
orientation between a consciousness and its objects is a necessary condition
for forming any propositions to begin with, as well as for informing our
identifications of reality truthfully. Propositions, it should be remembered,
are not irreducible; they consist of concepts, and concepts are formed by a
conscious process (namely concept-formation). Propositions are the product of
enormous integrations performed by a consciousness that is capable of forming
concepts from what it perceives in the world. Also, since truth is the
error-free identification of facts of reality, and identification of anything
in reality is possible for a consciousness only if it is first aware of what it
seeks to identify, the primacy of existence is a minimum precondition for such
exercises. So Osborne unwittingly demonstrates the implicit commitment of
analytical philosophy to the primacy of consciousness without realizing it by
promulgating such a blatant reversal.
Osborne suggests agreement with the primacy of existence
principle (his abbreviated version of it anyway) when he states
It seems consistent with the
intuition that objects bear their characteristics independently of the fact of
whether or not any being exists to perceive them.
It should be noted that, however “intuition” is construed,
it is typically understood to constitute an operation of consciousness, so the
act of “intuiting” this truth would involve not only consciousness but also
some object(s) which it considers (such as the statement “existence exists
independent of consciousness”) and thus serves to exemplify an instance of the
truth it seeks to interpret. In other words, it would be self-refuting to
"intuit" otherwise.
It is at this point, however, that Osborne reaffirms his
arbitrary restriction of Objectivism’s conception of consciousness to merely
perception. (I call his restriction arbitrary because Osborne gives no reason
why “perceptual dependence” would qualify as an instance of the primacy of
consciousness, but not, say, wishful dependence, that is, dependence on
wishing.) He states:
Recall earlier the axiom of
consciousness, which states that the only relation which consciousness can
enter into with any other member of @ must be of a kind R.
In other words, he is saying that the axiom of consciousness
holds that “the only relation which consciousness can enter into with any
[thing that exists] must be [perceptual in nature].” But as we saw above, the
axiom of consciousness nowhere restricts its own scope of reference in this
manner at all. Is it not by means of consciousness that I consider the fax that
I received at work today – and left at my office? I’m not
perceiving it now – I’m recalling it, the very action of
consciousness which Osborne asks his reader to use when he re-emphasizes his
arbitrary construal of the axiom of consciousness! Osborne makes use of many
operations of consciousness other than perception, but apparently fails to
realize that they are operations of consciousness.
He then reinterprets the argument from existence on this
misconstrued basis:
Thus, if God's consciousness is to
be metaphysically active, in the sense of being able to create objects, it must
do so by entering into an R-relation with @. But this violates Proposition A.
Hence, God-belief advocates the primacy of consciousness. It follows that if
the primacy of consciousness is false, then God does not exist.
In other words, the notion “God” can only be thought to
assume the primacy of consciousness if it is held that existence of objects
(e.g., the universe, etc.) depends on its perception of those objects.
This leaves completely open all the other expressions of the primacy of
consciousness which Objectivism identifies and which I have specified in my
argument. Since the primacy of consciousness has been construed to encompass
only “perceptual dependence,” the notion that the earth depends on someone’s wishing,
for instance, could not be categorized as an expression of the primacy of
consciousness, even though in terms of essentials it reduces to the same
orientation between subject and object entailed by “perceptual dependence.” How
far Osborne has wandered off from what the original argument from existence
argues!
Osborne then says that the argument is unsound because:
There seems to be no argument to
demonstrate that it is conceptually impossible for any form of consciousness to
enter into relations with @ that are not of a kind R.
He chalks this oversight up to the axiom of consciousness,
and yet the axiom of consciousness – as I showed above – nowhere claims that perception
is the only form or activity of consciousness. Indeed, where did Osborne get
the notion “conceptually possible”? Conceptual thought is a form of
conscious activity, and Objectivism includes this type of activity within the
range of units denoted by the axiom of consciousness. It also includes other
types of conscious activity, such as emotion, wishing, inferring, reminiscing,
etc.
So whether he realizes it or not, Osborne has ineluctably
attacked a straw man – a complete mischaracterization of the argument from
existence that I have presented. He does this primarily by arbitrarily
restricting the axiom of consciousness to mean only perceptual awareness, and
not allowing it to include other forms and activities of consciousness, and
then recasting the primacy of consciousness on this erroneous basis. Since, on
Osborne's view, forms or activities of consciousness other than perception are
exempt from partaking in the error that is the primacy of consciousness, the
argument from existence (on this reading) cannot soundly draw the conclusion
that the statement "God exists" is false.
Resting on this, Osborne then quotes Scott Ryan (from his Objectivism
and the Corruption of Rationality):
The axiom that "existence
exists," to the extent that it means anything at all, is apparently
intended to affirm what John Searle has called "external realism".
Such realism, as we saw in the preceding chapter, he characterizes as "the
view that there is a way things are that is logically independent of all human
representations" [The Construction of Social Reality, p. 155]. But as
Searle is at pains to argue, such realism does not, in and of itself, entail
that physical reality is causally independent of consciousness.
Ryan is conflating the axiom of existence with the primacy
of existence. The axiom of existence simply affirms the fact that there is a
reality as a fundamental and irreducible primary. By itself, it makes no
explicit statement about the relationship between consciousness and its
objects. Only when we get to the axiom of consciousness (which is inevitable)
does the relationship between consciousness and its objects (and with this the
distinction between internal and external phenomena) become an issue. This is
the issue of metaphysical primacy, and it is here where we discover and
identify the proper relationship between consciousness and its objects. It is
important to recognize, as pointed out above, that, according to Objectivism,
the concept ‘existence’ includes everything and anything which exists, including
consciousness. The notion ‘external realism’ suggests that everything
'outside of' or "external to" consciousness is real, and thus hazards
the implication that consciousness itself is not, or at least the inner
workings of consciousness are not real (though at points in his writings Searle
seems to avoid this). The problem here is that the descriptor “external” may be
affirmed without contextual understanding of the subject-object relationship,
thus inviting the offending implication. Objectivism – and thereby the axioms –
rejects this kind of implication by virtue of its recognition that
consciousness also exists.
Now many critics of Objectivism seek to make a lot of hay
from vague, isolated resemblances between some of its affirmations and
expressions and those found in other philosophies, and the resulting
association is exploited so as to tarnish our impression of it in some way.
Ryan, who is notorious for (apparently deliberately) misrepresenting what
Objectivism teaches (see for instance this
review of his aforementioned criticism of Objectivism), finds his equation
of the axiom of existence with Searle’s “external realism” all too convenient
as he tries to import Searle’s confessions and admissions into Objectivism.
This doesn’t work; the primacy of existence explicitly identifies the proper
relationship between consciousness and its objects, while Searle’s thesis
leaves this matter shrouded in murkiness. So while Searle’s “external realism”
might “not, in and of itself, entail that physical reality is causally
independent of consciousness,” the primacy of existence tells us that physical
objects do in fact exist independent of consciousness. That is the essence of
the recognition which the primacy of existence denotes: that existence exists independent
of consciousness. Meanwhile those who want to claim that “physical reality”
causally depends on consciousness, are invited
to demonstrate this.
But insofar as Searle’s position is concerned, Ryan’s point
can be taken seriously. For one can, assuming Searle’s point of view, affirm
that, on the one hand “there is a way things are that is logically independent
of all human representations,” and yet, on the other, also affirm that
“physical reality” is causally dependent on consciousness. For instance, we use
the name '
It should be pointed out here that, by simply raising this
concern, Ryan inadvertently confirms AFE’s
appropriateness in focusing on theism’s dependence on the primacy of
consciousness. He makes this clear by virtue of the fact that, as a theist, he
wants to keep the idea that “physical reality” is causally dependent on
consciousness philosophically available. Otherwise, why would he raise this
point?
Osborne then curiously states (having bought into his own faulty
construal):
This proposal is consistent with the
primacy of existence so long as we suppose such causal relations are not
perceptual relations.
What he is really saying is that the primacy of existence is
compatible with expressions of the primacy of consciousness which hoist forms of
consciousness other than perceptual awareness above any object(s) one might choose
to indicate. Consequently, wishing can hold metaphysical primacy over
the objects of consciousness, as can thinking, preferring, desiring,
imagining, evading, etc. Only by arbitrarily restricting
consciousness as the argument from existence understands it exclusively to
perception, can Osborne claim to have inoculated theism against AFE. Were the
argument already ineffective on its own terms, critics would not need to take such
dubious measures.
Even more curiously, Osborne says that “such things as
telepathy and telekinesis do not seem to violate the primacy of consciousness,
even though they involve mental actions.” I would love for Osborne to
demonstrate these abilities which he cites. If he could, I’m sure he would not
need to spend his time developing counter-arguments against essays on atheology. All he would need to do is demonstrate these
abilities and that would effectively demonstrate the reality of the primacy of consciousness
metaphysics.
Conclusion
Osborne has failed to refute the argument from existence. His
chosen path was not to argue that the primacy of consciousness is true, or that
views premised on the primacy of consciousness can actually be compatible with
the primacy of existence. Rather, the intent here was to show that the idea of
God does not actually assume the primacy of consciousness, and therefore does
not violate the primacy of existence. To do this, he had to restrict the axiom
of consciousness to entail exclusively perception – a stipulation that is
fundamentally contrary to what Objectivism teaches, thus allowing other forms
of consciousness to enjoy free reign over its objects (cf. telepathy and telekinesis).
So Osborne’s criticism of the argument from existence commits the fallacy known
as frozen abstraction. As I make clear above as well as in my presentation of
the argument from existence, consciousness involves more than merely
perception, and the axiom of consciousness includes every form and activity of
consciousness that we have discovered and will discover (just as the concept
‘man’ includes every man who exists now, who has existed and will exist). If we
recognize that the notion that an object depends on a subject’s perception
of it constitutes an instance of the primacy of consciousness, why wouldn’t we
also recognize that the notion that an object depends on a subject’s will
or imagination or commandments also grants metaphysical primacy to
consciousness? By use of a frozen abstraction in place of the axiom of
consciousness, Osborne seeks to special plead his way out of the devastating
conclusion of the argument from existence. But just as two wrongs don’t make a
right, two fallacies don’t add up to a worthy refutation. If critics want to
take down the argument from existence, they’ll have to keep trying.
Copyright
2007 Anton Thorn. All rights reserved.
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