[Lecture Six] The Philosophy of Objectivism
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 39 minutes
Course summary: This twelve lecture course presents the entire theoretical structure and key ideas of Objectivism. It covers all the major branches of philosophy and how Objectivism answers the essential questions in those areas. Ayn Rand attended the lectures and participated in a majority of the question and answer sessions after the lectures. Peikoff later used this material as the basis of his definitive book on Objectivism. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture examines the idea of rationality and its application to human life. Dr. Peikoff discusses the conflict between rationality and skepticism in the context of understanding the question of cognitive certainty. He discusses the nature of certainty and absolutes, contrasting the Objectivist perspective to agnosticism and rationalism. Further, the lecture explores the nature of the arbitrary. Peikoff concludes with a discussion of the relationship between reason and the emotions and how rationality and volition work together. Ayn Rand participates in this lecture’s question and answer session.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download below a PDF study guide for the entire course.
| What does it mean to declare that a conclusion is certain? |
| What is the scale of assessments for evaluating a conclusion or a fact? |
| Contrast the meaning of possible, probable, and certain. |
| What is a contradiction to say something is uncertain knowledge? |
| What is the common understanding of the idea of an absolute? Compare it to the proper understanding. |
| What is an arbitrary idea? How do we identify when an idea or argument is arbitrary? |
| How is it correct to say that the arbitrary assertion is worse than the false one? |
| How does the approach of agnosticism amount to concessions to the arbitrary? |
| Describe the relationship and difference between rationality and rationalism. |
| Why is the approach of “rationalist polemics” so dangerous to good thinking? |
| Describe and contrast the relationship between emotions and facts using concrete examples. |
| What are the ways that people attempt to evade the law of causality? |
| State the broadest formulation of the law of causality and differentiate it from the common mechanistic view. |
| What is the concept of psycho-epistemology? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:57:06 | My question is about the criteria of correspondence as a test of truth. Granted, an idea that corresponds to its object is indeed true, but how does one determine whether or not his idea does in fact bear a perfect correspondence to its object? To make this determination requires the use of some criterion other than correspondence. But if another test of truth has to be applied, the correspondence criterion becomes merely a definition of truth, not a decisive test. Besides a certain correspondence between an idea and reality, we still need to apply a test that will disclose the precise degree of similarity between what we think and what actually exists. If so, what is it? How does it work? Help! |
| 2:08:17 | Is the term “common sense” a valid concept? |
| 2:09:30 | Could you explain the difference (if any) between the Objectivist concept of “focus” and the popular meaning of “concentration”? |
| 2:09:50 | Is it possible in any sense to think in images rather than in conjunction with words? What I am thinking of, for example, is the mental process in which an architect projects in his imagination a kind of perspective view of a particular space and works on that image in his mind without necessarily, it seems at times, thinking in words. Isn’t an image, like a word, a perceptual concrete, which can stand for an idea? |
| 2:15:07 | Is there any validity to the technique of the devil’s advocate in philosophical discussions or as a training device for political discussion? |
| 2:16:26 | Do you regard any philosophers other than Aristotle and Ayn Rand as having identified important philosophic truth? |
| 2:20:33 | The test for an invalid concept is that it can’t be reduced back to the perceptual level. Is there some equivalent test for telling when context has been dropped, some principle or rule of thumb by which one can tell that context has been dropped? |
| 2:21:20 | My college biology text states the following definitions: “Plants are living things which are studied by people who say they are studying plants: botanists. Animals are living things that are studied by people who say they are studying animals: zoologists.” Please comment. |
| 2:22:00 | If the presidential election was to be between Carter and Reagan, would you have supported Carter on the basis of the anti-abortion Reagan stand? |
| 2:23:27 | Contradictions do not exist in reality. What, in fact, is happening in a mind that is holding or asserting a contradiction? Mental deterioration? |
| 2:24:30 | In what sense and for what reasons can you predict that a moral person will continue to be moral? People do seem somewhat consistent in character. But if the choice to think is a primary, can there be some quality that endures in a person that enables you to predict what his volitional choices will probably be? Must your prediction be limited to how a person will act, since a moral person’s premises and psycho-epistemology will tend to lead to better action given any given level of focus, as compared to an immoral premise and psycho-epistemology? |
| 2:27:37 | If a man makes an arbitrary claim and you discuss it, is it rationally valid to explain why you will not discuss it, that is, that arbitrary claims are without reference to reality? |
| 2:28:19 | Would you please comment on the current campaign in the press and media reviving the attacks on McCarthyism, etc.? For example, there’s Lillian Hellman’s book Scoundrel Time and a movie, The Front, about alleged blacklisted writers. Would you give us the true story of what happened during that period and explain why the issue is being revived now? |
| 2:37:49 | What is the difference between the concepts of “contextual absolutes” and “the coherence theory of truth,” which stresses context and posits an absolute? |
| 2:39:36 | Does the principle “the concept is of the entire entity” have any meaning or significance at the level of higher abstractions— “liberty,” “justice,” “entity,” for example? Could you indicate the role this principle has at this level? |