Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002
The Concept "Reason" revisited
Thomas M. Miovas, Jr.
William Brahm wrote:
> As a lifelong Objectivist I've always been uneasy
> about the definition AR gives for "reason": the
> faculty that identifies and integrates the material
> provided by man's senses. This definition, on my
> view, would apply to ALL animals because it refers
> to perception while pointedly excluding concept-
> formation.
I think Harry brought up some good points regarding the difference between
perceptual integration, which some higher-level animals have, and
conceptual integration, which only man has; but I think Ayn Rand came up
with her precise formulation of the definition of the term "reason" for a
purpose other than differentiating animals from man. I think she came up
with that formulation to cut off those philosophers claiming that any form
of mysticism or emotionalism is a form of reason. In other words, I think
it is part of her process of differentiating Objectivism from Intrinsicism
and Subjectivism.
<HB: A valid point.>
In this light, I might even go so far as saying she intentionally left
concept formation out of the definition explicitly to further ground the
faculty of reason to the organic nature of consciousness as man's only
means of survival qua man; in a sense as an expanded form of animal
perception and consciousness (for those animals that possess it). In other
words, the purpose of human consciousness is to guide one's manner of
living on earth according to the perceptually evident facts, as opposed to
striving for mystical insights for which there are no factual basis or
acting according to emotional outbursts for which there may or may not be a
factual basis.
Keep in mind that the philosopher whom Ayn Rand held to be the most evil
philosopher of all time was not someone who said that man is nothing more
than an brutish animal but rather someone who said that reason is
transcendental to perceptual evidence, Immanuel Kant.
I was going to look up a precise quote of the definition of the term
"reason" in Kant's works, but, alas, there is no index in either of my
books by him, so I turned to the Internet. I found a web site that actually
mapped out all the definitions in Kant and how they are interrelated.
"Pure reason" (i.e. the highest form of reason) is defined as: that which
contains the principles whereby we know anything absolutely *a priori*; the
term "a priori" is defined as: knowledge that is independent of experience
and the senses.
According to Kant, the highest form of reason in man is that which is based
on no facts at all.
What Ayn Rand wanted to do, and what I think she accomplished
superlatively, was to ground reason -- including it's highest abstractions
-- firmly to the perceptually self-evident; that is, she firmly grounded
reason to the facts.
As a measure of how Kantians respond to Ayn Rand's grasp of the nature of
reason, one of my college associates was from Germany and a thorough
Kantian who was quite capable of having friendly conversations with me on
almost any topic; however, once I began stressing that reason must be
factually based on the evidence of man's senses, he was so shocked that he
didn't know how to deal with me -- I mean, it was like he suddenly
discovered that I was from some strange contra-universe totally alien to
anything he had ever expected to encounter in his lifetime.
And that is precisely why Ayn Rand defined "reason" as "the faculty that
identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses."
