Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  Furthermore, Rand argues that every faculty, state, or process of awareness involves two essential attributes: “content and action—the content of awareness, and the action of consciousness in regard to that content” (Introduction, 29–30). Every sensation, perception, and conception, then, is constituted by the content of awareness, derived from reality, and an action of consciousness—automatic or volitional—in regard to the mind’s contents. There is no such thing as a content-less consciousness just as there is no such thing as a fully inactive consciousness.17 Content and action necessitate one another.

  According to Rand, on the first level of awareness, sensations must be recognized as irreducible primaries produced by sensory stimuli. They are irreducible because they cannot be reduced to or analyzed in terms of simpler units (Peikoff 1991b, 52). But she argued that sensations are not at the base of knowledge, for the mind cannot retain sensations in memory. The foundation of epistemology lies on the perceptual level of awareness. Rand defined a “perception” as “a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things.”18

  Hence, knowledge does not begin with isolated, atomistic sensations, but with an automatic integration of sensations into a percept retained by our brains. This process, beginning in early childhood in one sense modality, usually vision or touch, is eventually integrated across the senses, so that in one unitary frame of awareness we can perceive something in five modalities: we can see the ocean, hear its waves against the shore, feel the coolness of the water, smell and taste its salt content. We do not experience these sensations as discrete components of the perception, but as a relational totality. Our ability to abstract each of a perception’s sensory moments is a scientific, conceptual capacity that we acquire much later in life (Introduction, 5).

  Rand’s Objectivism opposes the diaphanous view of perception. Our consciousness is not a mirror reproducing the objects of the world free from the influence of our sensory organs. We perceive objects in a specific form. The form of our perception is a relational product of the object, our sense modalities, and the environmental conditions in which our sensory organs operate.19 We have no purely perceptual way of distinguishing between the object and the form in which it is perceived. Indeed, the form of our perception cannot be separated from the object and reified into a separate thing (Kelley 1986, 90). Subjects are perceptual systems. They cannot perceive objects external to their sensory means. They cannot attain a synoptic view that abstracts from the form. Their human sense modalities are internal to the process of perception (Kelley 1985bT, lecture 2). Peikoff (1972T, lecture 5) has called this a process of “dual actualization” in which the perception is a product of both the sense organ and the object. David Kelley (1991) explains: “Perception is a form of contact with the world, a real relation between subject and object, between the perceiver and what he perceives” (171–72).

  Rand’s distinction between the form of the object and the object itself is not a separation of appearance and essence, of things-as-they-appear and things-in-themselves. The form of our perception is not subjective; it is as much the product of reality as the object itself.20 It is an outgrowth of the identity of the object and the identity of the sense modalities involved in perception. A percept is not object alone or subject alone, but the object-as-perceived by the subject in a specific form (Peikoff 1991b, 46). A straight stick that appears bent in water is a form dictated by our sense modalities in conjunction with the object and the specific media and conditions of our perception. A color-blind person who sees gray where there is red has not made a mistake; he has perceived a color patch that is internal to his specific sense modalities. Rand defends the validity of the senses as an axiomatic proposition, for our sense organs have no capacity to misrepresent the facts of reality. As George Smith explains, the organs of perception “simply transmit sensations according to their physiological characteristics, which our brains then automatically integrate into percepts. We may misinterpret the basic data given to us, but there can be no question about the validity of the data per se.”21

  Rand recognized that a scientific examination of perception can help to distinguish between those aspects which are generated by our particular sense modalities and those which are products of the object itself. But in keeping with her injunction against hypothetical (and “cosmological”) speculation, Rand maintained that the ultimate relationship of form and object is a purely scientific question with no philosophical significance (Peikoff 1991b, 47–48).

  It is for this reason, for instance, that Rand refused to accept any distinction between primary and secondary perceptual qualities. Traditional philosophy defines primary characteristics as those which are intrinsic to the object. Secondary characteristics are those which are intrinsic to the subject’s perception of the object. Rand maintained, however, that to distinguish between these two categories, one would need to identify the irreducibility or primacy of a given physical attribute. This is a scientific question which has yet to be fully resolved (464 n. 3). It is illegitimate, in Rand’s view, to arbitrarily choose a primary characteristic such as extension, since science may yet discover that more basic causes are manifested in the form of extension as perceived by human sensory organs (Peikoff 1972T, lecture 12). Rand maintained that every attribute we perceive, including color and length, is perceived by some means. Even taste involves an interaction between certain chemical elements in the object and the nerve endings of the tongue (“Appendix,” 279–80). Those who attempt to identify—once and for all—the primary and secondary qualities of perception are engaging in what Kelley (1986) calls the “Cartesian quest for an infallible type of knowledge,” a form of perception that is somehow free from the conditions and limitations of the sensory apparatus (168).

  None of these Randian arguments should suggest that human perception takes place in a vacuum. As people grow to maturity, they begin to apply their conceptual knowledge to the act of perception. Perception itself is guided by our conscious purposes, cognitive history, particular interests, and psychological factors (147). Within the broader social context, Kelley explains, even symbolic objects “have evolved culturally to serve as perceptible bearers of meaning” (254). Yet any differences in perceptual (and conceptual) classifications across cultures do not invalidate the objectivity of the cognitive process. For instance, Kelley observes that although the basic terms of “color” may vary across cultures, the focal instances are not arbitrary, and can be translated from one language into another. Different cultural partitions are no more a proof of subjectivity than are the use of different languages.22

  VOLITION AND FOCUS

  Having analyzed the first and second levels of awareness, Rand knew that she had to investigate more deeply the third level of awareness distinctive to human cognition. Both animals and human beings are capable of experiencing sensations and perceptions. Human beings however, exhibit volitional, self-conscious, and conceptual awareness.23 Rand characterized volition as another philosophic axiom. Volition is the choice “to think or not to think,” and it is a causal primary in cognition.24 Such a choice has existential, epistemological, and ethical significance. But “to think or not to think” is Rand’s poetic expression for an even broader cognitive choice: whether or not to apply one’s ability to focus.

  Focusing is the most fundamental choice underlying and conditioning every other aspect of consciousness. It is more fundamental than the ability to choose among competing ideas or alternative courses of action. It is a constituent relation of cognition primarily. One cannot think, act, or desire without having volitionally “set” the mind into focal awareness in a general way.25

  The act of focusing is manifested in a variety of cognitive activities.26 There is a continuum of awareness such that the mind can move from near unconsciousness to peripheral awareness to focused awareness, with no inherent barriers between states. Focus
is much broader than the processes of deduction and induction. It can include meditation, relaxation, and even creative daydreaming.27 The most advanced categories of focal awareness will involve supreme clarity of mental content, a highly abstract level of cognitive activity, and the recognition of context. In all cases, the mind must initiate and sustain this process volitionally.28 In the Objectivist view, no antecedent, deterministic factors can explain why people choose or do not choose to focus.29 Rand recognized, however, that volitional focusing is automatized through habitual methods of thinking such that it would take a special effort for people to unfocus the mind.30

  Rand’s emphasis on the primary choice “to focus” does not imply that she was oblivious to the conditions, both existential and social, that can assist or block the acquisition and maturation of cognitive skills. These conditions form the broad context within which focal choices are made. This context is necessary but not sufficient to prompt human action.31 It does not strictly determine the ability of an individual to raise the level of his own focal awareness. Nor does the context invalidate the methods of cognition that must be used by all individuals in their attempts to gain knowledge of reality. But an individual’s interests, values, knowledge, and inborn capacities cannot be ignored in judging the efficacy of his focal choices (Peikoff 1991b, 65–66).

  For instance, certain inborn physical and cognitive differences make it more difficult—or easier—for some individuals to develop their cognitive skills. Children who are born blind and have their vision restored in later years at first must expend effort to raise their level of visual awareness. Previously, their powers of perception were developed through alternative sense modalities (such as touch). Once their vision is restored, they initially experience visual sensations but cannot see objects.32 However, the presence of innate disabilities or innate intelligence does not alter the fact that there are specific, objective means of cognition that each person must follow in the quest for knowledge. It is for this reason that Rand saw such innate differences as epistemologically insignificant.

  Nevertheless, certain social practices influence the development of cognitive skills. These practices have epistemological significance because they can facilitate or obstruct a child’s cognitive development. This is not an argument for social determinism; it is Rand’s way of tracing the interconnections between epistemology and cultural institutions, that is, between the development of cognition and the social practices that can accelerate—or destroy—it.33

  REASON

  One of the most striking aspects of Rand’s conception of human consciousness is her refusal to fragment the constituent relations that compose it. Her hostility toward dualism is manifested especially in her antipathy toward a bifurcated, fractured view of consciousness. Consciousness, as such, includes moments of perception, volition, focus, reason, abstraction, and conception. For Rand, these are not separate faculties. Each is both a component part of the others and a distinct aspect of a single, integrated totality.34 In fact, there are times when Rand’s definition of a single constituent of consciousness incorporates all of the other identified moments.

  But Rand sometimes identified consciousness with a single attribute. In her early journal entries, for instance, she argued that “all consciousness is reason” and “all reason is logic,” creating a virtual identity between reason, logic, and consciousness.35 These one-dimensional identities were formulated as a reaction against religion—which, in Rand’s view, fractured the relationship between consciousness and logic. She saw religion (i.e., faith) as a “disease,” a “departure” from reason, logic, and consciousness that necessarily undermined an individual’s cognitive contact with the world.36

  As Rand grew to intellectual maturity, her conception of reason transcended this one-sided emphasis on logic. Ultimately she embraced what Barry (1987) has described as “a particularly expansive concept of ‘reason’” (106). In Atlas Shrugged, Rand defined reason as the faculty of awareness, that is, “the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by [the] senses” (1016). In this definition, Rand incorporated the moments of perception, identification, and integration, preserving the hierarchical structure of cognition. But she refused to identify reason as a purely logical faculty. Nor is reason a faculty of perception. It is all of these things and more. Though Rand abstracted these aspects in order to examine their distinctiveness, she refused to reify them into separate faculties (Peikoff 1990–91T, lecture 10). For Rand, reason is an integrative faculty, combining analysis with synthesis and applying logic to experience. These characteristics are distinctions within an organic unity. Reason is at once a logical and a practical capacity. It enables the differentiation and integration of experiential data. It guides action and makes it possible to evaluate the consequences of action.

  Hence it is particularly disconcerting to read the claims of critics such as Hazel Barnes and Randall Dipert, who argue that Rand’s view of reason is one-dimensional. In Barnes’s illuminating study, Existentialist Ethics, she includes a provocative comparison of the works of Rand and Sartre. According to Barnes, Rand embraced an Aristotelian view of human beings as rational animals that is considerably narrower than Sartre’s view of human nature. For Sartre, reason is only one part of human being, not the totality, and self-awareness is what distinguishes humans from all other living organisms. Barnes criticizes Rand for equating such self-consciousness with the rational faculty. In Barnes’s view, Rand totalized reason while suppressing the other aspects of consciousness. Barnes suggests that Rand’s view of reason is strictly limited to its purely logical functions.37

  By contrast, Dipert argues that whereas Marx embraced an expansive, practical conception of reason, Rand endorsed a view of the mind as entirely passive.38 For Marx, as for Aristotle, reason includes both theoretical and practical abilities, the capacity to contemplate, plan, deliberate, intend, and act. However, Rand does not deny any of these constituent aspects of the rational faculty. Dipert erroneously collapses Rand’s understanding of the moment of perception into her view of reason. He confuses Rand’s concept of reason, which necessarily involves cognitive activity, with her view of the metaphysical passivity of perceptual processes.

  For Rand, reason embodies epistemological and practical activity. This is a reflection of the seamless unity of mind and body. Since reason is the faculty for knowing reality, and since it functions through the corporeality of the senses, it must also be the faculty that guides action. For Rand, this relationship between reason and action was demonstrated unequivocally by the Industrial Revolution (Peikoff 1991b, 195). Prior to the emergence of capitalism, the connection between knowledge and praxis was not fully appreciated. It was only with the application of reason to the production of material goods that human beings began to recognize the inseparable link between the conceptual faculty and survival.39

  Rand argued that the faculty of reason guides and directs human consciousness, in a process she once dubbed “front-seat driving.” Reason is an engine of active, purposeful thinking. As an integrative faculty, it transcends the purely passive, associational methods of perception, even as it incorporates perception as one of its distinct moments.40

  Rand’s view of the relationship between reason and action is more specifically a conception of the link between an individual’s reason and actions. The faculty of reason is not a faculty of “pure rationality” disconnected from the individual who possesses it. Rand tied her epistemological perspective to her emphasis on the ontological priority of individuals. For Rand, the mind “is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain.… The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone.… No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred” (Fountainhead, 680).

  Rand recognized that knowledge itself is a product of conceptual thought. It can
be transmitted socially and intergenerationally. But the rational faculty itself is not transferable. The individual can perform cognitive functions only in the isolation of his own mind, “rationally grasping every step in the process” as a means of comprehending the whole. People may share what they have learned, but they cannot share how—the actual means by which—they think. People may be able to articulate the methods of cognition, but they cannot share the epistemic processes, which are performed individually.41

  ABSTRACTION AND CONCEPTION

  Rand regarded perception as a nonvolitional process integrating sensations into a single unit. She regarded this integration as a primitive relational form at the base of knowledge. In her view, human beings transcend the purely perceptual level of awareness. The volitional ability to focus and reason—in short, the capacity to think—constitutes and is constituted by a distinctly human, conceptual level of awareness. The difference between conception and perception, then, lies in the character of the relation. Perception is a relational integration of sensations performed automatically by the mind. It is awareness of concrete entities, rather than of isolated sensations. Conception, by contrast, is a relational integration of perceptions performed volitionally by the mind. The ability to regard perceived entities as relational units is distinctive to this human mode of cognition. Rand explains: “The building-block of man’s knowledge is the concept of an ‘existent’—of something that exists, be it a thing, an attribute or an action” (Introduction, 5). The concept of “existent” is implicit in every percept. The mind makes a transition from an awareness of existents to an awareness of their specific identity. The ability to discover the “identity” of an existent emerges from the perceptual ability to distinguish among entities. It is the capacity to differentiate entities from one another.