Defense of Objectivism

I read "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand" by Leonard Peikoff and I really liked it because Rand's philosophy is clear and stands on it's own - a magnificent independent way to arrive at values, purpose, rights, and wrongs. As I became more interested in government and politics and what is the best way to run a country so that I can decide how to vote in election, my own thoughts over the years have been moving in this direction. Reading this book was like coming home to something familiar because Rand's insightful definitions gave me a strong base of validated concepts to which I can reduce all my thoughts and check their course.

Also, I think overall Peikoff did a great job of writing all of it clearly and in a well-organized book, but there are some mistakes that I hope can be corrected in a future edition. By pointing out the mistakes - whether Peikoff's or Rand's - I am defending Objectivism from criticism that it does not deserve:

1. In the chapter "Reality", in the section "The Metaphysically Given as Absolute", Peikoff writes: "The Objectivist view of existence culminates in the principle that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible or imaginable."  I agree that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible. I disagree that no alternative is imaginable. To the point: In the book Peikoff addresses several commonly held beliefs that are not grounded in reality. If no alternative to reality is imaginable, and people are able to imagine God, gremlins, dragons, Santa Claus, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, then all those things must be possible in reality somewhere and somehow. This means anything man imagines is possible. This amounts to a primacy of consciousness view. The Objectivist view should be read as: "No alternative to a fact of reality is possible."

2. In the chapter "Reality", in the section "Idealism and Materialism as the Rejection of Basic Axioms", Peikoff illustrates that the idea of the supernatural is a rejection of the basic axioms of existence, identity, and consciousness by relating beliefs about God to the Objectivist viewpoint.

Peikoff writes: "Is God the creator of the universe? Not if existence has primacy over consciousness." I disagree here. The Objectivist philosophy does state that existence has primacy over consciousness - however, this can only be validated within our own existence. Our existence has primacy over our consciousness. If God created our existence (in the conventional sense as in created it out of nothing), it means God is outside of our existence. He therefore may have the power to manipulate it supernaturally. But this changes nothing - by definition, anything God makes happen within our existence is possible within our existence. And our existence, though manipulated by God, still has primacy over our consciousness. Could God's existence have primacy over God's consciousness? Since this question is regarding a subject matter outside our existence, Objectivism has nothing to say about it. Does God need a creator? Again, it's a question outside our existence. These questions presuppose ideas about something about which we don't have evidence and can never get evidence since it's outside of our existence. In Objectivism these ideas are called arbitrary because they are not rooted in our existence and therefore have no evidence that can be used to prove them true or false. Objectivism doesn't require a creator. Objectivism accepts our existence as primary and builds on that. The Objectivist view should be: "Is God the creator of the universe? This presupposes that God is outside existence and therefore it cannot be shown to be true or false. A question about the nature of God is outside the realm of Objectivism, because no amount of discussion of this idea can add to human knowledge unless it has its roots in firm evidence. Objectivism, being a philosophy rooted in existence, therefore regards this question as arbitrary."

Peikoff writes: "Is God the designer of the universe? Not if A is A. The alternative to design is not chance. It is causality." This requires the same adjustment as the previous question. To design anything, one must exist before the thing is created. Even in the Objectivist sense of creation as the re-arranging of existents, this is an illogical leap because it attempts to answer the question about design before first establishing the facts: The question presupposes the existence of God. Since we have no evidence about the existence of God, this question is also arbitrary and cannot be shown to be true or false. While some people may claim to have evidence, these claims have been around for thousands of years of known history and still the evidence has not been sufficient for man to accept the existence of God as a fact the same way man accepts the existence of rocks as a fact.

Peikoff writes: "Is God omnipotent? Nothing and no one can alter the metaphysically given." This requires the same adjustment as the previous question. Even after acknowledging that this is an arbitrary question because it presupposes the existence of God for which we have no evidence, and suspending disbelief: if God does exist, if he designed and created the universe in the Objectivist sense of re-arranging existents, I think that would qualify as omnipotence... and yet those who believe in God believe that he is in some way responsible for the content of the Bible and that the content of the Bible is true, and there is plenty of "evidence" in the Bible in the form of things God says and does pointing to the notion that God is not omnipotent. All very interesting, but since Objectivism seeks to guide man's thoughts with a firm grounding in reality, this is all outside the realm of Objectivism. That's not to say it's outside the realm of discussion. It just doesn't add anything to man's knowledge about the world.

Peikoff writes: "Is God infinite? Infinite does not mean large; it means larger than any specific quantity, i.e., of no specific quantity. An infinite quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A... The actual is always finite." Again, questions about the nature of God are outside the realm of Objectivism and add nothing to human knowledge. I love the example though, and I think it should be rewritten as "Can anything be infinite? ..." because that is something people do wonder about. Infinity is a useful concept that allows us to compress our notations and refine our thinking, but it's not real.

Peikoff writes: "Can God perform miracles? A miracle does not mean merely the unusual. A miracle is an action not possible to the entities involved by their nature; it would be a violation of identity." Again, a question outside the realm of Objectivism. But I disagree with the definition of miracle here. I consulted various dictionaries and in all definitions a miracle is either something outside of the laws of nature that we know or can explain - this leaves open the possibility of re-arranging existents to create that effect. This is essentially a spiritual view of magic in the sense that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic to a person unfamiliar with its foundations - consider the magical talking mirror in the tale of Snow White, written before even the telephone was invented, and how our modern every-day ability of video chat would appear to a person of that time as a magical talking mirror. A person who believes in God and who believes that God either created or designed the universe must then also believe that God can perform miracles - and that many of his activities as told in the Bible are themselves miracles even if they are not explicitly described as such. A person who does not believe in God must not believe that God can perform miracles. But Objectivism? Objectivism doesn't care. Any person who wishes to use the wisdom of Objectivism must similarly suspend his questions about God while engaged in reasoning and learning about our world. Anything that we see and cannot explain should be noted and  the evidence preserved or recorded to the best of our capability so that other people may have a chance to discover something new about our world. If we cannot preserve any evidence, it's unreasonable to expect anyone to believe it. There's nothing wrong with saying that something is a miracle - it just means we don't have an explanation for it yet. We still have the choice to investigate it and learn something or leave it alone if we're not interested in learning anything new. Is it a coincidence that in a time when we know a lot more about nature than our ancestors, the number of miracles seems to be dwindling? But they will never completely disappear: As long as we don't know everything about the universe, there will remain a possibility for miracles.

Peikoff writes: "Is God purely spiritual? Spiritual means pertaining to consciousness, and consciousness is a faculty of certain living organisms, the faculty of perceiving that which exists. A consciousness transcending nature would be a consciousness transcending organism and object. So far from being all-knowing, such a thing would have neither means nor content of perception; it would be non-conscious." Again, the Objectivist answer must be: "A question about the nature of God is outside the realm of Objectivism, because no amount of discussion of this idea can add to human knowledge unless it has its roots in firm evidence."

So although I think Peikoff's example with God does a disservice to Objectivism by trying to reason about something that is arbitrary, he does clear up the matter soon after by writing: "There is no logic that will lead from the facts of this world to a realm contradicting them" and "If one is to postulate a supernatural realm, one must... rely instead on faith." This amounts to a clear separation of religion or any other mysticism from Objectivism. It's brilliant.

3. In the chapter "Reason", in the section "The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False", Peikoff writes: "The reason that Objectivism rejects agnosticism should now be clear... Agnosticism is not simply the pleading of ignorance. It is the enshrinement of ignorance... The agnostic treats arbitrary claims as matters properly open to consideration, discussion, evaluation... He demands proof of a negative... in struggling to elevate the arbitrary to a position of cognitive respect, he is attempting to equate the arbitrary with the logically supported... In considering any issue, never permit ourself one minute in the quicksands of a baseless "I don't know". Instead, establish first that the issue is related to the realm of evidence and thus deserves consideration. Then study the evidence, weighing the possibilities in accordance with the principles of logic. Then make up your mind and take a stand... One can reach [truth] only by a process of reason."

I disagree with Peikoff's assertion that agnosticism is the enshrinement of ignorance. I think just as Peikoff's so-called objective treatment of God misapplies reason to an arbitrary claim, certain famous agnostics have misapplied their uncertainty about God to all other knowledge. I think Objectivism and agnosticism go hand in hand, they are two sides of the same coin. Objectivism is explicitly concerned only with things that are grounded in reality. Agnosticism is concerned only with things that are not grounded in reality: without evidence, we can never know with certainty if a claim is true or false. This is just a restatement of Objectivism's definition of arbitrary. Thomas Huxley, who invented the term "agnostic", certainly did not try to equate the arbitrary with the logically supported. To the contrary, he stated that before one can reason about any such questions one needs evidence. He wrote that the human intellect is out of its depth in these matters, that you can discuss them at length without arriving at any new knowledge. This agnostic viewpoint is the same as the Objectivist viewpoint: discussion of arbitrary claims cannot add to human knowledge precisely because they are not grounded with evidence. This applies to any claim from conspiracy theories to religion.

I do agree that agnostics who say that nothing is certain are practicing what Rand calls evasion: willfully disengaging their mind from examining the evidence available to them and reasoning about it, willfully avoiding the hard work of acquiring new knowledge. Applying agnosticism to alarm clocks and probabilities is a mistake: agnosticism is not uncertainty about the future, it's uncertainty about propositions that cannot be proven true or false because there is no evidence for either case. Regarding knowledge about our world, agnosticism amounts to scientific skepticism which is endorsed by Objectivism: "study the evidence, weighing the possibilities in accordance with the principles of logic [(such as the scientific method)]. Then make up your mind and take a stand... One can reach [truth] only by a process of reason."

Quite the opposite of "enshrinement of ignorance", Thomas Huxley who invented the term agnostic was active in the scientific community of his day. He was an early vocal and public supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, but only after he reviewed the massive amount of evidence that Darwin had amassed.

The Objectivist viewpoint should be: "Objectivism and agnosticism are two sides of the same coin. Just as reason can be misused to give credibility to arbitrary claims, agnosticism can be misused to claim ignorance when evidence is available. While discussion of arbitrary matters can be very entertaining, it should be understood that without evidence, such discussion can never lead to new knowledge."