The following is an edited version of a planned full review of Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. The review ran in The Connection, from about October, 1993 to September, 1995. I never finished the review, but decided to revise what has already been published in hopes that it will prove helpful to others. For the record, I believe there are other, better reviews out there, especially the chapter by chapter one done on the now defunct Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy.
The various people who responded to my review in The Connection have proven to be very helpful in this revision. The usual disclaimer applies: the mistakes are my fault!
I do not recommend anyone read this book as an introduction to Objectivism. The book is not technical in the sense of being full of big words and esoterica, but it isn't a good introduction. It lacks the confrontation that makes Rand such a good read. Peikoff consciously tried to be as dry and as nonconfrontational as possible. He has achieved his goal. This is not to say the book isn't clear. It is, but there are few negative arguments in it. He rarely examines opposing views. His goal is to present Objectivism not answer critics. Even when he does criticize other views, it is in a very minimal and strawman manner. He doesn't mention names and he simplifies rival viewpoints to the point of pure caricature.
If you want to learn about Objectivism, read The Virtue of Selfishness, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, For the New Intellectual, Philosophy Who Needs It – most available in cheap paperback form. For the more philosophically inclined, I recommend Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, David Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses, Chris Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, and The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand edited by Doulgas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, and Louis Torres' and Michelle Kamhi's forthcoming tome What Art Is. (On the last, I've only read the essays upon which the book is based.)
I do not recommend any of the purely negatively critical works, such as John W. Robbins' Answer to Ayn Rand, because the ones I've read have tended to start by not taking any part of Objectivism seriously and also by isolating specific positions of Objectivism for criticism all the while ignoring other areas – whether intentionally, I know not. This is not to say that there should not be critical work done on Objectivism and Rand's views. (I do distinguish between Objectivism and the views of Rand regardless of what she or any of her seconds might believe on this.)
Note also that I do not recommend Rand's fiction. This is not because I dislike it – though my views on it are critical to a large extent. Nor is it that I think her fiction is unphilosophical – which would be false. Some even accuse it of being too philosophical and preachy. I agree with this to some extent. It is instead because art – whether novels, paintings, or cello concerti – appeals mainly to one's subconscious and one's emotions. This is not to say it is or has to be irrational. (Rand railed against making a false antagonism between reason and emotion, between thinking and feeling.) But, at least, with nonfiction, the appeal is typically more sober and less likely to take someone in because of its emotional power. (This said, I have to admit, Rand's nonfiction exudes passion.)
The stated purpose of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand is to present Ayn Rand's philosophy in a systematic and logically ordered manner. The order of and within the chapters mirrors this desire. It starts with metaphysics and ends with art. In between, it deals with epistemology, ethics, and politics. This is, according to most Peikoff, the order of philosophy. Metaphysics is the most fundamental area and esthetics the most applied, though this writer thinks that esthetics is really outside this ordering. (Not everyone inside or outside of Objectivism agrees with this. Others, including myself, believe that esthetics is not less fundamental than politics. It should be stressed too that whether one believes Objectivism is a valid philosophy is not an issue here. Any philosophy can be ordered this way.)
The first chapter ("Reality") is dedicated to metaphysics. To those not familiar with the subject, he defines it as "the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the universe as a whole." (p3) It's the most basic branch of all, the ground on which the rest is placed – the study of "what is" in the most general terms possible.
According to Objectivism or Peikoff's version of it, what does metaphysics have to say about the universe as a whole? He distills the answer into three important axioms, existence, consciousness and identity. The first and most fundamental, existence, can be stated as "existence exists". This may sound very uncontroversial and boring but philosophical fundamentals are not meant to be circus acts. They should at least to be true and applicable.
Consciousness is also axiomatic in that all our knowledge is grounded in the incontrovertible fact that we are aware. To deny consciousness in general is to contradict one's self. After all, denial is an act of consciousness!
The Axiom of Identity, alias "A is A" or "A thing is itself," states anything must be something. A corollary to this is causality, i.e., a thing changes according to what it is – according to its identity.
So far, so good. While some may disagree with the above, as far as the average Objectivist is concerned the above points are rehashes of what Rand already maintained. You don't need to read Peikoff's book to find these things out. What new perspective has he added?
For one thing, he links the concept of necessity to the axioms of existence and identity. This problem goes back to Plato (See his Timaeus and Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being) and can be stated roughly as "Could the world have been different?" Since Peikoff believes in free will, he thinks some things could be different, but as far as anything outside the scope of man-made things, he thinks necessity is a true principle. In other words, whatever is, except for things we have a choice about, had to be. There are NO contingent facts; all facts are necessary.
This is a powerful statement and represents a position taken on an issue almost as old as philosophy itself. Is it true? First, it is possible to extend man-made to cover anything produced by some volitional process without making the distinction into an ad hoc one. Why? It could be the case that other animals have a form of volition or that other volitional beings exist elsewhere or that future artificial intelligences will have volition. Thus, we have a realm of necessity, known in Objectivist circles as the "metaphysical", and a realm of choice, known as the "man-made". (This seems similar to realms of neccessity and freedom in Marx's writings.) Isn't there a third realm? What about the random?
According to Peikoff, there are no uncaused facts, except for the grounding one of existence itself. Any other given fact is either caused nonvolitionally or by a volitional agent. This allows no room for anything which could be otherwise regardless of volition. However, what of the randomness quantum mechanics and thermodynamics seem to be grounded in? He believes that the distinction here is between our knowledge and the facts. Things are what they are regardless of our awareness of them. That I have no knowledge of Clinton's birth does not mean he was not born or that he came into existence when I became aware of him.
Now suppose instead, we allow for fundamental randomness of the type hinted at above. What would that imply? According to Peikoff, it would violate the axiom of identity. How so? For A to cause B, A has to cause it in a specific manner. For A to cause something else instead, C, A must cause C in another specific manner different from the first. This means that the cause of B is not just A, but also other conditions. In the same way, C is caused by A and still another set of conditions. Ergo, neither B nor C are random outcomes. They result from a different set of causes, albeit the differences in many cases may be nearly undetectable. Since existence dictates what is – not consciousness, we canot attribute our inability to know things as a limit on what things are and how they change.
The second through fifth chapters ("Sense Perception and Volition", "Concept-Formation", "Objectivity", and "Reason") deal with epistemology, defined as the study of "the nature and means of human knowledge." (p3) Unlike metaphysics, epistemology is evaluative – it sets up criteria for guiding human cognition, e.g., the rules of logic. By contrast, metaphysics states only what is. No choice is involved in what is.
What choice is there in human knowledge? Either what someone thinks is true or it is false, isn't it? On the perceptual level of cognition, this is the case. Peikoff considers perception almost outside the scope of epistemology, since it's not evaluative. If something is wrong with your eyes you consult a doctor not a book on logic. Perception is something you have no choice about. You have no choice on how your eyes will respond to a given object – outside of trivial changes, such as wearing tinted lenses, pointing your eyes in one direction, or turning on a light.
Thinking is another matter. Forming of concepts, grasping the meaning of a sentence and predicting how your spouse will react to the flowers you sent all involve something more than perception. They also, according to Objectivism, involve volition. While perception is automatic, thinking and all it involves is not. But isn't thinking a causal process? If one starts from the same facts and uses the same methods, shouldn't one arrive at the same conclusions? Where's the choice in thinking? Aren't any differences of conclusions, of thinking, then due to differences in method and in knowledge and not in volition? This seems a cogent attack on the idea of thinking as volitional. Objectivism does not claim that thinking has no identity or that it can produce any conclusions whatsoever. So, what of volition?
Volition is not with respect to the particular processes of thinking but with the overall focus. In other words, the real choice is not how to think or to which conclusions to think to, but on whether or not to think.
Unfortunately, Peikoff's treatment of sense perception leaves a lot to be desired. He sees the issue as almost superfluous and makes a mistake that Ayn Rand made in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. In Rand's case the mistake is forgivable because she didn't have the same data from perceptual psychology we have today.
This is in regards to sensation. Both Rand and Peikoff believe that very young infants experience the world via sensations. From this sensational form of awareness they slowly learn to form perceptions. As they grow older, their direct contact with reality shifts from sensations to perceptions.
There's an important difference between sensational and perceptual awareness. Sensations are unconnected experiences like seeing shifting patches of green as opposed to perceptions like seeing the leaves of a tree in a breeze. Another way of looking at it is that sensations are awareness of individual [secondary] qualities (such as color, warmth, tone) and perceptions are the awareness of entities (such as people, trees, guitars).
The problem might seem like a side issue, but it isn't because of a problem David Hume pointed out: there is no nonarbitrary way to build entities from sensations. The fact that we attribute "round, white, cold" to a snowball we are perceiving, according to Hume, is merely the result of convention. We have no way of knowing if the sensations add up to a snowball or if they are merely some random flux in our experience we momentarily label as such. This is a problem for any theory that tries to cognitively build perceptions from sensations. It is for this reason that Immanuel Kant postulated his categories, casting off consciousness from some of its ties to reality.
What is the mistake? It is in assuming that infants actually learn how to perceive. Work in the past few decades in perceptual psychology shows that this is not the case. In humans, at least, there is no sensational stage in awareness. Of course, under certain conditions – such sensory deprivation, the influence of drugs and damage to perceptual systems – people can experience sensations. Still, the normal form of direct awareness in infants and adults is perception. Perception is automatic and direct. It is not built out of sensations. It is our ground level contact with reality.
With that out of the way, let's look at the rest of the chapter. There are many other problems that crop up in relation to perception. All of the ones I know are examples of fallacious thinking. The main ones are the arguments from perceptual relativity, from illusion and from dreams.
George Berkeley used the argument from perceptual relativity to knock down any belief in a mind independent world – at least a mind independent world as given to the senses. He argued that if we perceived mind independent objects, then we should experience them as unchanging except when they change and not when we change. For instance, a car looks smaller when one moves away from it and larger when one moves nearer. The car has not changed only our position relative to it has. Another example, which confounded many realists at the time, is that of a bucket of water. It goes like this. Before putting her hands in the bucket, the subject has one hand immersed in water much warmer than the bucket's and the other in water much cooler. Placing both hands in the bucket, to her, the water feels warm to the cool hand and cool to the warm hand. Can the water be both cool and warm at the same time? To thinkers like Berkeley this convicted perception of a grave flaw.
From the way I've phrased Berkeley's argument, we can already glimpse the solution to the problem. Perception, indeed any form of awareness, is not only dependent upon the object, but also upon the subject. Awareness is always awareness by a specific means (such as vision) under specific conditions (such as low lighting). To demand otherwise is to demand that awareness work by no means at all, as if it had no identity. Since awareness works by specific means, it should come as no surprise that cars look larger up close and smaller far away. Our visual systems are not free of the laws of optics. The same goes for the hands in the bucket experiment. The thermal sensors in our skin do not detect temparature but heat flow. Thus, things warmer than these sensors feel warm and things colder feel cold. (This also neatly explains why in the after a hot summer, a few mild days feel very cool, when after a cold winter, similarly cool says feel rather warm.)
But do we perceive reality if our experience is colored by our very means of perception? Yes. We perceive by specific means, but this does not mean our perceptions are not tied to reality.
The argument from illusion is not a problem with perception per se, but one of perceptual judgment. Take the classic example of the straight stick that looks bent when partly submerged in water. The usual argument is that the real stick is straight but the image looks bent. The stick cannot be both at the same time. Don't our senses deceive us as to the true nature of the stick? Again, the argument asks us to deny that awareness has an identity. The stick looks bent because under the conditions light is refracted in certain ways and our eyes react accordingly. The perception is not deceptive. We are merely perceiving the straightness of the stick under unusual conditions and we may make wrong judgments because of this. (In other words, we are used to perceiving the stick's shape in a different way.)
The argument from dreams, which Rene Descartes put a lot weight on, basically states that all we perceive could be but a dream. In other words, you're reading of this book review could be merely a dream. There might truly be no such book review. This can be extended to cover all experiences. The problem with this argument is that it assumes there is a difference between perception and dreaming (and there is) but then it undercuts this difference. It hedges. At first, it assumes they are different, then it says there is no way to tell them apart. If there is no way to tell perception from dreaming, can they be separated to support the argument from dreams? They cannot because that would be a contradiction.
The second chapter ("Sense Perception and Volition") covers both sense perception and volition.
Recall that Peikoff defines epistemology as the study of "the nature and means of human knowledge." (3) An important starting point of this is that epistemology "is based on the premise that man can acquire knowledge ONLY if he performs certain definite processes. This premise means that a man cannot accept ideas at random and count them as knowledge merely because he feels like it." (37) He gives two reasons for this: "knowledge is knowledge of reality, and existence has primacy over consciousness. If the mind wishes to know existence, therefore, it must conform to existence" and human knowledge is "conceptual in nature" and the "conceptual level of consciousness... is not automatic or infallible; it can err, distort, depart from reality (whether through ignorance or evasion)." (37-8) Epistemology tells one how to gain knowledge with a "fallible conceptual consciousness."
Are these two reasons valid? Yes, because of the primacy of existence, i.e., the mind does not create reality, and because the human mind does not automatically or errorlessly acquire knowledge. On the contrary. The mind must take great pains to get and validate knowledge.
If the mind did create reality – if consciousness was primary – epistemology and knowledge would be both unnecessary and impossible. It would be unnecessary because reality would be the whim of the mind and reality would have to conform to that whim. It would be impossible because there would be no way to offer guidance to thought.
Peikoff argues the senses are "necessarily valid." Their validity is axiomatic because any argument used to undercut them ultimately relies on them. "Proof consists in reducing an idea back to the data provided by the senses." (39) All knowledge is built on evidence derived from sensory perception. This is an important point to which he comes back to again when explicating the concept of "objectivity."
His goal "is not to argue FOR the testimony of our eyes and ears, but to remove the groundless doubts about these organs..." (39) Above, I went over some of these "groundless doubts" and, hopefully, showed how they all resulted from a denial of the Law of Identity as applied to consciousness. See also pages 39-44 and David Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses for elaborations.
What are sensory qualities and what is their status? We know that under different conditions the same object appears to one differently. From this, the appearance is a factor of the object's actual traits, the conditions of one's perception (e.g., lighting in the room), and one's perceptual systems. Sensory qualities are the result of the interaction of all three. Thus qualities like "redness" are not subjective nor are they intrinsic. They are neither products of a mind divorced from reality nor a reality unperceived by a mind.
According to Objectivism, consciousness possesses identity. The history of epistemology, from the Greeks on, threaded with two overall views on consciousness. One, known as the naive realist view, is that consciousness is a reflection of reality. Holders of this position from Aristotle to Sartre, maintain that consciousness has no identity. It's viewed as a clean sheet paper on which experiences writes clearly about what is outside of consciousness. The other, holds that consciousness has an identity and because it holds the naive realist model as the standard, believes consciousness cannot perceive reality but instead either creates reality or systematically distorts perception in such ways that ultimately nothing can be known of reality.
Chapter Two ("Sense Perception and Volition") covers the Objectivist position on free will. For much of history "free will" has been looked upon as the domain of mystics. Objectivism holds that humans have free will, yet it claims to do so based on reasoning from reality as opposed to arguing God gave man free will (as theists do) or consciousness is outside reality (as Existentialists do).
Many different philosophers also posit free will, including Aquinas, Locke, and Sartre. There are differences in how free will is conceived by these thinkers. For some, the choice is one of actions; for others, one of feelings; for still others, of ideas.
For Objectivism, the essence of it – the fundamental choice – is to focus or not to focus. Focus is defined as the level of awareness. This can range from full clarity to unconsciousness. This may seem nonsensical. How can someone choose to focus if they are unconscious? By definition, doesn't one have to be conscious to choose? Yes, but this does not mean that one can't lower the focus all the way to unconsciousness. After that, choice is no longer operating.
Human actions, both mental and physical, are both caused and free. There is no contradiction here. Causation does not imply determinism. It implies that entities, including people, have an identity and act according to that identity. If that identity includes volition the entity can act volitionally, for the same reason that paper can burn. Paper burns because of its nature. People have free will because of their nature.
The modern notion of causation is one of succession. A cause is seen as an event leading necessarily to another event, such as a cold wind causes one to shiver. This much is true, but the effect is governed not only by the conditions but also by the nature of entities involved. The same cold wind does not cause a corpse or a wooden post to shiver.
Volition is axiomatic because in denying volition one would have to assume it in the process. How? Validation depends on the mind being free to accept the validation or not. A mind incapable of freely accepting the validity of a given claim would not be able to have knowledge any more than your knee has knowledge when it jerks after being tapped. (Notice how axioms are always at the base of knowledge. This is the nature of axioms. They are general ideas that cover all knowledge and are necessary for it to be knowledge.)
Validating volition is not the same thing as explaining it or linking it to other things. This is the another step and, in some respects, a scientific question. (See Ronald Merrill's "On the Physical Meaning of Volition" in Objectivity 1(5) for a view that integrates free will with Godel's Theorems. For the record, I disagree with Merrill's view of free will.)
Chapter Three covers the Objectivist theory of concepts, or at least on how they are made. For Rand's original coverage of this area, including a more detailed discussion, see her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
Before understanding how concepts are formed, let's examine them. What are they? Concepts are mental phenomena. No one reading this will ever encounter a concept while walking down the street. To distinguish a concept from other things, let's look at how it differs from an existent, such as a grapefruit. If you have a grapefruit in front of you it is a particular grapefruit: all its qualities are unique to it, such as texture, shape, color, taste, age, chemical composition, etc. It is different from all other grapefruits. If you doubt me, try to find two grapefruits that are identical in any respect, such as weight or color or surface pattern. The concept of "grapefruit" is very different from this. It covers more than one instance – in fact, all instances of grapefruits, including all those you have seen, tasted and felt as well as those you have yet to see and those you will never see. This is known as a concept's universality. Also, via the concept all grapefruits are equal in the sense that they are all grapefruits. There is no grapefruit that is less so while another is more so, barring borderline cases. How can this be? The actual grapefruits – the things the concept "grapefruit" seems to cover – are each different in every respect. Also, the concept does not seem to entail the particular qualities that the real grapefruits have, such a the "Sunkist" stamp. This is known as the concept's abstractness.
The two processes involved in forming concepts are differentiation and integration. One must be able to identify differences and likenesses in order to have any knowledge at all. Of these, differentiation is the simpler to recognize. This is because it's implied, via the Law of Noncontradiction, to the Law of Identity. In order for things to have identities they must be something and this entails not being something else, or being different from other things.
Difference is not enough. Since every existent is different from every other existent, one might suppose that this process would lead to confusion. Wouldn't any set of differences and likenesses serve as well to form concepts? Isn't the process arbitrary?
No. In order to form a concept, a given thing or a property of that thing must not only be differentiated from other things, it must be integrated with things or properties similar to it. Thus a child forms the concept of red by noticing two or more red things against a background (whether present or remembered) of other colors. The first concepts – first in temporal order – are those closest to perception. The differences and similarities are, thereby, initially perceptual ones, such as those of shape, color, texture, tone, heat and the like. However, concept formation is not limited to precepts. In fact, after a child forms a few ground level concepts, she almost immediately begins to organize these into higher level concepts. The concepts of "red" and "green" get differentiated from other visual experiences into "color" and so on. There is no inherent limit to how far this abstracting process can go.
Difference and similarity imply a means of measuring these. This does not mean one needs a precise scale for every concept one forms. In the case of low level concepts, differences and similarities need only be perceived. However, that they are similar implies a qualitative likeness and a quantitative difference. For example, the difference between the various shades of red are quantitative in nature. (Rand defines similarity here in terms of quantity: "similarity, in this context, is the relationship between two or more existents which possess the same characteristic(s), but in different measure or degree." (p13, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology 2/e)
Objectivism posits that concepts are formed by ignoring the quantitative difference(s) between the items subsumed under them while emphasizing their qualitative difference from other items. Hence the term measurement-omission. The measurements between the items are ignored to form a concept, but they are not denied. The concept of lion, for instance, allows that instances of lion may differ in hair color and it omits these differences by saying, in effect, "lions must have some hair color, but it can be any color."
Also covered in chapter 3 is the role of definition in concept formation. A common confusion with concepts is that they are identified with their definitions. This problem started with Plato and Aristotle roughly followed the same mistake because of his view of essences. The essence of a concept is its defining trait. Aristotle thought that the essence was the primary property of things. The other properties he termed "accidents" and they somehow stuck onto the essence as a kind of metaphysical afterthought.
Why would this be a problem? Aside from the shaky metaphysics behind it – i.e., some properties of a given thing are viewed as more a part of it, while others are not – it has implications both for the nature of concepts and of meaning. It points to the idea that the definition of a given concept sort of stick out in the things themselves. It's almost as if the definition was a tag hanging around the neck of the thing defined. This would mean that definition is intrinsic (i.e., independent of consciousness), couldn't change (if it did the concept defined would have to change too) and that if someone had the wrong definition the cause behind this has to be either willful lying or conceptual inferiority (almost like color blindness).
However, all the traits of a given thing are part of its identity and all are real. What then is the role if any of essence in concepts? It concerns the needs of consciousness. The human mind cannot hold all aspects of a given things, even just the immediately perceived ones, in focus at once. The difficulties multiply once one rises above the level of perception. A concept covers not just what is before one at a given moment, but all of a particular thing or quality. The concept of cloud covers all clouds. Even if you limit you scope to only the clouds you've seen in your lifetime up until now, you would be overwhelmed by the details. Mental chaos – as opposed to cognitive economy – would be the result.
Definitions are the means by which the mind is able to keep its concepts well differentiated. They do this by focusing on those traits of a concept which explain the most about it and disregarding the rest. Again, this does not mean a concept is its definition.
From this, you might gather that keeping concepts well defined depends on the context of one's knowledge. Thus definitions can change while the concept remains the same. This can be because one learns more about the things the concept refers to, as when meteorologists discovered under what conditions clouds are formed. It can also be because one's knowledge in other areas increases, such as when a child discovers that dogs aren't the only animals people make into pets. In these examples, changes in knowledge drive changes in definitions. This does not make definition arbitrary. Meterologists and children can't choose any definition they want for "cloud" or "dog" – it depends on their context not their fancy.
The purpose of definition should be clear, but how are definitions formed? Is there a specific form to good definition? Yes, the best form of definition, the one that achieves the economy that makes definition necessary, is by far the species-genus form. This is the ideal to which all definitions should aspire with two exceptions, the axiomatic and ostensive definition. Axiomatic concepts (such as existence, identity, consciousness) are undefinable because they are at the root of knowledge and are irreducible. They can't be analyzed into other concepts. Ostensive concepts (e.g., green) similarly point to perceptual judgments and can't be inferred from other knowledge.
The species-genus form reflects the context of knowledge by identifying the specific difference and similarities between a concept and its closest mental neighbors. A classic example is defining man as "rational animal." This puts man into the context of animals (e.g., fish, flies, and foxes) that are more similar to him than other things (e.g., fire engines, clouds, and trees) and points to the thing that makes man different from all other animals, i.e., its particular method of cognition: reason.
This brings up another problem, why choose "reason" or any differentia to define "man" or any concept? Since the differences between man and other animals are virtually infinite, why choose one specific difference over all the others? For example, man appears to be the only animal that builds split level ranch houses or practices piano playing, so why not define man as "split level ranch building animal" or "piano playing animal"? How do we know, out of this vast array of differences, which one to choose? This matter can be expanded to cover all definition. If defining man is arbitrary, one might conclude that defining anything is arbitrary. Some have maintained just this.
The method used by Objectivism is to look for the traits that account for the biggest difference or the most difference between the concept and other things. In essence, this can be seen as similar to Aristotle's search for the causes in things. The trait which accounts for the most differences is most likely a causative factor that necessarily leads to the other qualities.
In man, that trait is reason, hence the definition "rational animal." Man's possession of reason accounts for the most differences between him and other animals. (The role of the genus is to place the concept in a wider field. This reflects the structure of knowledge as a nesting of interrelated concepts grounded ultimately in sense percepts.)
On the problems Jim Stumm [another writer in The Connection] has raised regarding this definition, Peikoff states that "... the proposition that man is the rational animal does not mean that men always follow reason; many do not. Nor does it mean that man alone possesses the faculty of reason. It means that this faculty is a fundamental of human nature, because man is an organism who survives by its use."
Defining a living thing – i.e., man – by its means of survival appears defensible on the grounds that living things live. That is the most important trait they have. It set them apart from nonliving things. It also accounts for their structure and behavior. The way a living thing stays alive is very important because it must act in order to stay in existence. Such action has a big effect on everything else about it. A tiger's claws, teeth, particular digestive system, instincts, senses all function in order for it to get on with the business of living. In like manner, humans use reason. Though the tiger is a predator, this does not mean that it can't be put into a situation, such as a zoo, where its defining qualities are not used. So it is with humans. Young children, the mentally handicapped, and the irrational can still go on living but this depends on some outside factor, e.g., parents, friends, the state, intervening. They also rely upon those who do reason and who are rational (to some extent).
Definitions are the result of the need of our finite consciousness to reduce the number of details about a given thing or set of things down to a manageable size. Definitions are tools not concretes.
In the fourth chapter ("Objectivity"), Peikoff states "To be 'objective' in one's conceptual activities is volitionally to adhere to the facts of reality by following certain rules of method, a method based on facts and appropiate to man's form of cognition." (p117) This implies that the human "form of cognition" works in specific ways and that it can fail. In other words, that humans can choose to make that process work or not. This happens only on the conceptual level because perception is automatic and, for the most part, unchangeable by direct acts of thought. One can't will oneself out of nearsightness or from seeing optical illusions.
What are these "rules of method" of which he writes so fondly? They are none other than the rules of logic, which Rand defined as "the art of noncontradictory identification." (p36, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2/e) "Noncontradictory identification" is, of course, a redundancy because identity implies noncontradiction. Nonetheless, it's a useful redundancy since it emphasizes the nature of logic.
Peikoff defines proof as "the process of establishing truth by reducing a proposition to axioms, i.e., ultimately, to sensory evidence." (Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p120) This definition seems uncontroversial. It involves taking things which are not clear and making them so. Self-evidencies, such as axioms and percepts, are the bedrock of knowledge. The structures erected on this bedrock must ultimately trace some connection to the ground. Proof is one's way of tracing this connection, of making sure that one's ideas are not going against the foundation, are not unconnected to reality.
Proof applies to propositions, such as "dogs are vivaporous", and a similar method applies to concepts. This method Peikoff dubs "reduction." A reduction means "the process of identifying in logical sequence the intermediate steps that relate a cognitive item to perceptual data." (p133) Reducing the concept of "vivaporous" to perceptual data, for instance, involves exposing the intermediate steps in the formation of this concept – the prior formation of concepts such as "living being," "birth," and so on. ("Vivaporous" means live birth – as opposed to being born from eggs.) Before one could form a valid proposition like "dogs are vivaporous" (i.e., claim it as knowledge) one would have to be sure its concepts were grounded in reality. Reduction is the way of making sure such is the case.
This is where the review ends... I've edited it a bit, but not enough. Some of the stuff needs a bit more clarification and it's more summary than review. However, I've no intention of going further with this project.