Dans cet épisode :

• Les niveaux de conscience
• Concepts et définitions
• Essences et principes
• La raison et ses concurrents
• Intégration, contexte et hiérarchie
• Les sophismes
• Rationalisme et empirisme

Sources

Lorsqu’aucun nom n’est précisé, l’auteur est Ayn Rand. Si jamais un propos tenu au cours du podcast vous semble avoir besoin d’être sourcé et ne l’est pas ici, contactez moi, je ferai mon possible pour compléter ce manque. Mais ces sources n’ont pas vocation à être absolument exhaustives.

Introduction

[00:35] Ce qu’est l’épistémologie

• « Concepts of Consciousness » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Expanded Second edition, New York, Meridian / Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990), chap. 4, p. 36 : « Epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Introduction to Objectivism » (vidéo, Ayn Rand Institute, 1995), enregistrement YouTube [04:50] : « Epistemology [is the] theory of knowledge: How do you know you know? What qualifies as knowledge? What tests does an idea have to go through to be able to say: “I do know.”? Can you ever really know? Can you be certain? All questions of knowledge is epistemology. »

[01:21] La philosophie est d’abord épistémologie

• « Two Possible Books », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (éd. HARRIMAN David, New York: Plume, 1999), part. 5 « Final Years », chap. 16, entrée du 19 juin 1958, p. 699 : « The real crux of this issue is that philosophy is primarily epistemology—the science of the means, the rules, and the methods of human knowledge. »

[01:55] Perception et volition comme antichambre de l’épistémologie

• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), « Foreword to the First Edition », p. 3 : « For the purposes of this series, the validity of the senses must be taken for granted… »
• « Consciousness and Identity » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 78-79 : « Man is neither infallible nor omniscient; if he were, a discipline such as epistemology—the theory of knowledge—would not be necessary nor possible: his knowledge would be automatic, unquestionable and total. But such is not man’s nature. Man is a being of volitional consciousness: beyond the level of percepts—a level inadequate to the cognitive requirements of his survival—man has to acquire knowledge by his own effort, which he may exercise or not, and by a process of reason, which he may apply correctly or not. Nature gives him no automatic guarantee of his mental efficacy; he is capable of error, of evasion, of psychological distortion. He needs a method of cognition, which he himself has to discover: he must discover how to use his rational faculty, how to validate his conclusions, how to distinguish truth from falsehood, how to set the criteria of what he may accept as knowledge. Two questions are involved in his every conclusion, conviction, decision, choice or claim: What do I know?—and: How do I know it? It is the task of epistemology to provide the answer to the “How?”—which then enables the special sciences to provide the answers to the “What?” »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York, Dutton, 1991),  chap. 2, « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 39 : « The topics of sense perception and volition constitute what we may call the anteroom of epistemology. In considering these topics, we are not studying conceptual knowledge. We are laying down the prerequisites of such a study. »

Les niveaux de conscience

[02:58] Les trois niveaux

• « Cognition and Measurement » (1966), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 5 : « [C]hronologically, man’s consciousness develops in three stages: the stage of sensations, the perceptual, the conceptual—epistemologically, the base of all of man’s knowledge is the perceptual stage. »

[03:15] Le niveau sensoriel

• « Definitions », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 40 : « Sensations are the primary material of consciousness… »
• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (New York, Signet / New American Library, 1964), chap. 1, p. 18 : « The lower of the conscious species possess only the faculty of sensation, which is sufficient to direct their actions and provide for their needs. A sensation is produced by the automatic reaction of a sense organ to a stimulus from the outside world; it lasts for the duration of the immediate moment, as long as the stimulus lasts and no longer. Sensations are an automatic response, an automatic form of knowledge, which a consciousness can neither seek nor evade. »

[03:50] Le niveau perceptuel

• « Cognition and Measurement » (1966), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 5 : « A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of “direct perception” or “‘direct awareness,” we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery. »
• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 19 : « The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness: they possess the faculty of retaining sensations, which is the faculty of perception. A “perception” is 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. »

[04:19] Le niveau conceptuel

• « For the New Intellectual » dans For the New Intellectual (New York: The New American Library, Signet Books, 1961), p. 14 : « Man’s consciousness shares with animals the first two stages of its development: sensations and perceptions; but it is the third state, conceptions, that makes him man. Sensations are integrated into perceptions automatically, by the brain of a man or of an animal. But to integrate perceptions into conceptions by a process of abstraction, is a feat that man alone has the power to perform—and he has to perform it by choice. The process of abstraction, and of concept-formation is a process of reason, of thought; it is not automatic nor instinctive nor involuntary nor infallible. »
• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 20 : « It consists of a method of using one’s consciousness, best designated by the term “conceptualizing.” It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking. »

Concepts et définitions

[05:02] La connaissance humaine est conceptuelle

• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), « Foreword to the First Edition », p. 1 : « The issue of concepts (known as “the problem of universals”) is philosophy’s central issue. Since man’s knowledge is gained and held in conceptual form, the validity of man’s knowledge depends on the validity of concepts. »

[05:20] Le problème des universaux

• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), « Foreword to the First Edition », p. 1-2 : « What is the relationship between abstractions and concretes? To what precisely do concepts refer in reality? Do they refer to something real, something that exists—or are they merely inventions of man’s mind, arbitrary constructs or loose approximations that cannot claim to represent knowledge? […] To exemplify the issue as it is usually presented: When we refer to three persons as “men,” what do we designate by that term? The three persons are three individuals who differ in every particular respect and may not possess a single identical characteristic (not even their fingerprints). If you list all their particular characteristics, you will not find one representing “manness.” Where is the ”manness” in men? What, in reality, corresponds to the concept “man” in our mind? »

[07:30] La formation des concepts

• « Summary », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 83 : « Similarity is the relationship between two or more existents which possess the same characteristic(s), but in different measure or degree. The process of concept-formation consists of mentally isolating two or more existents by means of their distinguishing characteristic, and retaining this characteristic while omitting their particular measurements—on the principle that these measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity. A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted. »
• Pour une présentation plus détaillée, voir : « Concept-Formation« , dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 10-18.

[11:55] Le mot

• « Concept-Formation« , dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 10 : « In order to be used as a single unit, the enormous sum integrated by a concept has to be given the form of a single, specific, perceptual concrete, which will differentiate it from all other concretes and from all other concepts. This is the function performed by language. Language is a code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the psycho-epistemological function of converting concepts into the mental equivalent of concretes. Language is the exclusive domain and tool of concepts. Every word we use (with the exception of proper names) is a symbol that denotes a concept, i.e., that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a certain kind. »

[12:24] On définit les concepts, pas les mots

• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 40 : « It is often said that definitions state the meaning of words. This is true, but it is not exact. A word is merely a visual-auditory symbol used to represent a concept; a word has no meaning other than that of the concept it symbolizes, and the meaning of a concept consists of its units. It is not words, but concepts that man defines—by specifying their referents. The purpose of a definition is to distinguish a concept from all other concepts and thus to keep its units differentiated from all other existents. »

[12:43] Définition genus-differentia

• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 41 : « The rules of correct definition are derived from the process of concept-formation. The units of a concept were differentiated—by means of a distinguishing characteristic(s)—from other existents possessing a commensurable characteristic, a “Conceptual Common Denominator.” A definition follows the same principle: it specifies the distinguishing characteristic(s) of the units, and indicates the category of existents from which they were differentiated. The distinguishing characteristic(s) of the units becomes the differentia of the concept’s definition; the existents possessing a “Conceptual Common Denominator” become the genus. Thus a definition complies with the two essential functions of consciousness: differentiation and integration. The differentia isolates the units of a concept from all other existents; the genus indicates their connection to a wider group of existents. »

[14:05] La caractéristique essentielle

• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 45 : « Now observe, on the above example, the process of determining an essential characteristic: the rule of fundamentality. When a given group of existents has more than one characteristic distinguishing it from other existents, man must observe the relationships among these various characteristics and discover the one on which all the others (or the greatest number of others) depend, i.e., the fundamental characteristic without which the others would not be possible. This fundamental characteristic is the essential distinguishing characteristic of the existents involved, and the proper defining characteristic of the concept. »

[14:22] Les définitions sont contextuelles

• « Summary », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 85 : « Just as the process of concept-formation is contextual, so all definitions are contextual. The designation of an essential characteristic depends on the context of man’s knowledge; a primitive definition, if correct, does not contradict a more advanced one: the latter merely expands the former. An objective definition, valid for all men, is determined according to all the relevant knowledge available at that stage of mankind’s development. » Definitions are not changelessly absolute, but they are contextually absolute.

[14:55] Un concept ne se réduit pas à sa définition

• « Abstraction from Abstractions », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 27 : « Just as the concept “man” does not consist merely of “rational faculty”’ (if it did, the two would be equivalent and interchangeable, which they are not), but includes all the characteristics of “man,” with “rational faculty” serving as the distinguishing characteristic—so, in the case of wider concepts, the concept “animal” does not consist merely of “consciousness and locomotion,” but subsumes all the characteristics of all the animal species, with “consciousness and locomotion” serving as the distinguishing characteristic. »
• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 42 : « A definition is not a description; it implies, but does not mention all the characteristics of a concept’s units. If a definition were to list all the characteristics, it would defeat its own purpose: it would provide an indiscriminate, undifferentiated and, in effect, pre-conceptual conglomeration of characteristics which would not serve to distinguish the units from all other existents, nor the concept from all other concepts. A definition must identify the nature of the units, i.e., the essential characteristics without which the units would not be the kind of existents they are. But it is important to remember that a definition implies all the characteristics of the units, since it identifies their essential, not their exhaustive, characteristics; since it designates existents, not their isolated aspects; and since it is a condensation of, not a substitute for, a wider knowledge of the existents involved. »

[15:39] La confusion de la dichotomie analytique-synthétique

• PEIKOFF Leonard, « The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy » (1967), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 115 : « The epistemological basis of this dichotomy is the view that a concept consists only of its definition. According to the dichotomy, it is logically impermissible to contradict the definition of a concept; what one asserts by this means is “logically” impossible. But to contradict any of the non-defining characteristics of a concept’s referents, is regarded as logically permissible; what one asserts in such a case is merely “empirically” impossible. Thus, a “married bachelor” contradicts the definition of “bachelor” and hence is regarded as “logically” impossible. But a “bachelor who can fly to the moon by means of flapping his arms” is regarded as “logically” possible, because the definition of “bachelor” (“an unmarried man”) does not specify his means of locomotion. What is ignored here is the fact that the concept “bachelor” is a subcategory of the concept “man,” that as such it includes all the characteristics of the entity “man,” and that these exclude the ability to fly by flapping his arms. Only by reducing a concept to its definition and by evading all the other characteristics of its referents can one claim that such projections do not involve a self-contradiction. »

[17:39] En quel sens toute vérité est une tautologie

• PEIKOFF Leonard, « The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy » (1967), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 100 : « Whether one states that “A man is a rational animal,” or that “A man has only two eyes’’—in both cases, the predicated characteristics are true of man and are, therefore, included in the concept “man.” The meaning of the first statement is: “A certain type of entity, including all its characteristics (among which are rationality and animality) is: a rational animal.” The meaning of the second is: “A certain type of entity, including all its characteristics (among which is the possession of only two eyes) has: only two eyes.” Each of these statements is an instance of the Law of Identity; each is a “tautology”; to deny either is to contradict the meaning of the concept “man,” and thus to endorse a self-contradiction. A similar type of analysis is applicable to every true statement. Every truth about a given existent(s) reduces, in basic pattern, to: “X is: one or more of the things which it is.” The predicate in such a case states some characteristic(s) of the subject; but since it is a characteristic of the subject, the concept(s) designating the subject in fact includes the predicate from the outset. If one wishes to use the term “tautology” in this context, then all truths are “tautological.” (And, by the same reasoning, all falsehoods are self-contradictions.) »

[18:10] Application de la théorie à divers types de concepts.

• Pour les concepts de la conscience en général, voir « Concepts of Consciousness » (1966), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 29-39.
• Pour les concepts de méthode en particulier, voir ibid., p. 35-37
• Pour les concepts grammaticaux en particulier, voir ibid., p. 37-38.
• Pour les concepts axiomatiques, voir « Axiomatic Concepts » (1966), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 55-61.

[18:55] L' »épistémologie des corvidés »

• « The Cognitive Role of Concepts », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 62-63 : « The experiment was conducted to ascertain the extent of the ability of birds to deal with numbers. A hidden observer watched the behavior of a flock of crows gathered in a clearing of the woods. When a man came into the clearing and went on into the woods, the crows hid in the tree tops and would not come out until he returned and left the way he had come. When three men went into the woods and only two returned, the crows would not come out: they waited until the third one had left. But when five men went into the woods and only four returned, the crows came out of hiding. Apparently, their power of discrimination did not extend beyond three units—and their perceptual-mathematical ability consisted of a sequence such as: one-two-three-many. Whether this particular experiment is accurate or not, the truth of the principle it illustrates can be ascertained introspectively: if we omit all conceptual knowledge, including the ability to count in terms of numbers, and attempt to see how many units (or existents of a given kind) we can discriminate, remember and deal with by purely perceptual means (e.g., visually or auditorially, but without counting), we will discover that the range of man’s perceptual ability may be greater, but not much greater, than that of the crow: we may grasp and hold five or six units at most. This fact is the best demonstration of the cognitive role of concepts. »

[18:55] À quoi servent les concepts ?

• « The Cognitive Role of Concepts », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 63 : « Since consciousness is a specific faculty, it has a specific nature or identity and, therefore, its range is limited: it cannot perceive everything at once; since awareness, on all its levels, requires an active process, it cannot do everything at once. Whether the units with which one deals are percepts or concepts, the range of what man can hold in the focus of his conscious awareness at any given moment, is limited. The essence, therefore, of man’s incomparable cognitive power is the ability to reduce a vast amount of information to a minimal number of units—which is the task performed by his conceptual faculty. And the principle of unit-economy is one of that faculty’s essential guiding principles. »
• Ibid., p. 64 : « Conceptualization is a method of expanding man’s consciousness by reducing the number of its content’s units—a systematic means to an unlimited integration of cognitive data. A concept substitutes one symbol (one word) for the enormity of the perceptual aggregate of the concretes it subsumes. In order to perform its unit-reducing function, the symbol has to become automatized in a man’s consciousness, i.e., the enormous sum of its referents must be instantly (implicitly) available to his conscious mind whenever he uses that concept, without the need of perceptual visualization or mental summarizing—in the same manner as the concept “5” does not require that he visualize five sticks every time he uses it. »

[20:35] Le rasoir de Rand

• « The Cognitive Role of Concepts », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 72 : « The requirements of cognition determine the objective criteria of conceptualization. They can be summed up best in the form of an epistemological “razor”: concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity—the corollary of which is: nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity.« 

[21:12] Citation sur l’objectivité des concepts

• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 54 : « None of these schools regards concepts as objective, i.e., as neither revealed nor invented, but as produced by man’s consciousness in accordance with the facts of reality, as mental integrations of factual data computed by man—as the products of a cognitive method of classification whose processes must be performed by man, but whose content is dictated by reality. It is as if, philosophically, mankind is still in the stage of transition which characterizes a child in the process of learning to speak—a child who is using his conceptual faculty, but has not developed it sufficiently to be able to examine it self-consciously and discover that what he is using is reason. »

Essences et principes

[23:17] Ce qu’est une essence

• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 52 : « It is Aristotle who first formulated the principles of correct definition. It is Aristotle who identified the fact that only concretes exist. But Aristotle held that definitions refer to metaphysical essences, which exist in concretes as a special element or formative power, and he held that the process of concept-formation depends on a kind of direct intuition by which man’s mind grasps these essences and forms concepts accordingly. Aristotle regarded “essence” as metaphysical; Objectivism regards it as epistemological. Objectivism holds that the essence of a concept is that fundamental characteristic(s) of its units on which the greatest number of other characteristics depend, and which distinguishes these units from all other existents within the field of man’s knowledge. […] An essential characteristic is factual, in the sense that it does exist, does determine other characteristics and does distinguish a group of existents from all others; it is epistemological in the sense that the classification of “essential characteristic” is a device of man’s method of cognition—a means of classifying, condensing and integrating an ever-growing body of knowledge. »

[24:08] Penser en termes d’essences

• « Two Possible Books », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 5 « Final Years », chap. 16, « Memory-Storing Epistemology », p. 676 : « [M]an […] has to condense and simplify every new event by means of its essentials, […] he cannot treat every new event as if it were an undifferentiated, unprecedented first in a baby’s blank consciousness, but must integrate (or at least relate) it to the context of his past knowledge… […] Thus, a rational man, considering a specific […] event, will call on his conceptual knowledge to identify the event by means of its essence. »
• « Philosophy: Who Needs It » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1982), chap. 1, p. 9 : « The best way to study philosophy is to approach it as one approaches a detective story: follow every trail, clue and implication, in order to discover who is a murderer and who is a hero. The criterion of detection is two questions: Why? and How? If a given tenet seems to be true—why? If another tenet seems to be false—why? and how is it being put over? You will not find all the answers immediately, but you will acquire an invaluable characteristic: the ability to think in terms of essentials. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand » (1987), dans The Voice of Reason (New York: Meridian, 1990), p. 342 : « For Ayn Rand, thinking in essentials was not restricted to the issue of definitions. It was a method of understanding any complex situation by deliberately setting aside irrelevancies—such as insignificant details, superficial similarities, unimportant differences—and going instead to the heart of the matter, to the aspects which, as we may say, constitute the distinctive core or being of the situation. »
• Pour une présentation plus détaillée de la pensée en termes d’essences, voir principalement : BRANDEN Barbara, « The Conceptual Level of Consciousness, part 1 » (1962), conférence dans la série Principles of Efficient Thinking (New York: Nathaniel Branden Institute, 1962) et PEIKOFF Leonard, « Thinking in Essentials » (1992), dans The Art of Thinking (éd. BERLINER Michael, Irvine, CA: Ayn Rand Institute, 2024), Lecture 3.

[25:58] Ce qu’est un principe

• « The Anatomy of Compromise » (1967), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (Signet Books ed. New York: The New American Library, 1967), chap. 14, p. 144 : « A principle is “a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.” Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.) chap. 7 « The Good », p. 216 : « Every science and every field of thought involves the discovery and application of principles. Leaving aside certain special cases, a principle may be described as a fundamental reached by induction. Such knowledge is necessary to a conceptual consciousness for the same reason that induction and the grasp of fundamentals are necessary. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Why Act on Principle?« , dans Why Act on Principle? (Santa Ana, CA: Ayn Rand Institute Press, 2024), chap. 1 : « A principle is a basic generalization. It is a conceptual statement integrating a wealth of information about all kinds of concretes that we otherwise would be helpless to deal with or keep in mind. Yet we are able to do it by reducing this information to a few words or even just a few letters, like “e=mc2.” A principle is man’s major form of using concepts—using them to reduce the complexity facing him while retaining all the information that is essential for successful action. »

[25:58] Penser en termes de principes

• « The Anatomy of Compromise » (1967), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 144 : « The manifestation of a disintegrating consciousness is the inability to think and act in terms of principles. »
• « Credibility and Polarization » (1971), dans The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 1, n° 1, p. 3 : « Concrete problems cannot even be grasped, let alone judged or solved, without reference to abstract principles. »
• « Philosophy: Who Needs It » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 6 : « You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Thinking in Principles » (1992), dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 4 : « You can’t avoid some kind of generalizations, and you can’t even avoid integrating them, because with the crow epistemology, you couldn’t function at all. So this is not an option in the basic sense. But, of course, you have to do it correctly. »
• BRANDEN Barbara, « The Conceptual Level of Consciousness, part 1 » (1962), conférence dans la série Principles of Efficient Thinking (op. cit.) : « This approach to the concretes of one’s experience, the mental habit of thinking in principles, is an essential characteristic of the conceptual level of consciousness. It means: always seeking to understand or interpret one’s perceptions, experiences, observations by reference to abstractions, to general principles. It means: always seeking to integrate concretes and abstractions. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Thinking in Principles » (1992), dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 4 : « Now that I’ve given you a general introduction to principles and why they are necessary, we want to learn to think in principle. »
• Pour une présentation plus détaillée de la pensée en termes de principes, voir principalement : PEIKOFF Leonard, « Thinking in Principles » (1992), dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 4 ; et BRANDEN Barbara, « The Conceptual Level of Consciousness, part 1 » (1962), conférence dans la série Principles of Efficient Thinking (op. cit.).

[27:18] Passer de l’observé à l’inobservé

• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Thinking in Principles » (1992), dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 4 : « [P]rinciples enable you to predict the future because they abstract away from temporal conditions. In the same way that the concept “table” is applicable to all future tables, anything you learn about tables, any sub-generalization that is finally integrated into a principle will be true of everything within that category. »
• BINSWANGER Harry, How We Know (TOF Publications, 2014), chap. 9 « Principles », p. 308 : « Principles enable us to apply what we have learned about observed cases to those as yet unobserved. […] Generalizations serve as cognitive bridges leading from cases that have been studied to those that have not been. As with a literal bridge, the value of a principle is that it allows one to cross over—i.e., to take knowledge gained by investigating the concretes from which one generalized and apply it to concretes not yet investigated. »
• HARRIMAN David, The Logical Leap (New York: New American Library, 2010), chap. 1 « The Foundation », p. 7 : « When we reason from “Men in my experience are mortal” to “All men are mortal”; or from “These fires burn me when touched” to “Fire by its nature burns”; or from “This apple and the moon obey the law of gravity” to “Every physical object in the universe obeys the law,” in all such cases we are passing from one realm to another: from the observed to the unobserved; from the past behavior of nature to its future behavior; from what we discover in a narrow corner of a vast cosmos to what is true everywhere in that cosmos. »

[27:43] Connaître, c’est comprendre causalement (Rand et Aristote)

• Atlas Shrugged (35th Anniversary Edition, New York, Dutton, 1992), p. 1038 : « …the process of thinking, which is the process of defining identity and discovering causal connections. »
• Ibid., p. 1041 : « [T]he day when he grasps that […] his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full context of his sensory material, […]—that is the day of his birth as a thinker and scientist. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Certainty » dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 5 : « I agree with Aristotle—and I’m sure Ayn Rand does, too—that the two things to know about knowledge is that something exists and why. All knowledge reduces to that. »
• ARISTOTE, Métaphysique (Flammarion, trad. Duminil & Jaulin, 2008), Livre A, 1, p. 73-74, [980b25] : « Mais nous pensons pourtant que, du moins, savoir et comprendre appartiennent plus à l’art qu’à l’expérience, et nous concevons que les hommes de l’art sont plus sages que les hommes d’expérience, dans la pensée que, chez tous, la sagesse accompagne plutôt le savoir, et cela parce que les uns savent la cause, les autres non. Car les gens d’expérience savent le fait, mais ignorent le pourquoi, tandis que les autres acquièrent la connaissance du pourquoi, c’est-à-dire de la cause. Pour cette raison aussi, nous jugeons que ceux qui dirigent ont, en chaque domaine, plus de valeur et plus de savoir que ceux qui exécutent et qu’ils sont plus sages parce qu’ils savent les causes de ce qu’ils produisent ; quant aux [exécutants], ils produisent comme certains êtres inanimés aussi produisent, sans savoir ce qu’ils produisent, de même que le feu brûle ; donc les êtres inanimés produisent chacun de ces effets par une certaine nature tandis que les exécutants le font par habitude. Et dans la pensée qu’ils sont plus sages, non parce qu’ils ont plus d’habileté pratique, mais parce qu’ils possèdent la définition et acquièrent la connaissance des causes. »

[28:33] Les statistiques ne sont pas de la connaissance

• « Speaking Freely » (1972), interview d’Ayn Rand avec Edwin Newman, NBC-TV, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), chap. 27, p. 210 : « They predominantly use the statistical method, which is valuable in some realms, but is not the basis of scientific knowledge. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Certainty » dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 5 : « Now I want to state exactly […] the Objectivist position on statistics. This is basically out of Ayn Rand’s mouth to me. Statistics are applicable only when: One, you are unavoidably ignorant about a concrete, or about a given concrete. And two, some action is necessary. […] Knowledge of the concrete […] erases the applicability of statistical probabilities. In other words, when you know something about a given concrete, you have no business applying statistics to it. Statistics are an expression of ignorance. They are a quantification of ignorance. They are not a form of cognition. They are not knowledge. They are a calculation to permit action in the face of ignorance. As soon as you have knowledge of a particular, the statistics become insignificant. They are displaced, they are pushed out of the picture, by your knowledge. » (Pour plus de détails, voir dans cette conférence les sections « Certainty and Statistics » et « The Objectivist Position on Statistics ».

[28:59] L’induction comme identification causale

• « Induction », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.) Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 295 : « Prof. H : This is a common question relating to induction. Someone is boiling water, and he notices that every time the water gets to a certain temperature, it boils. Now he wants to know: does all water boil at that temperature, or is it only due to some accidental feature about this particular water? How does he determine whether it’s accidental or essential? — Ayn Rand : By whether you can or cannot establish a causal connection between what you have determined to be the essential characteristic of water and the fact that it boils at a certain temperature. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Hierarchy« , dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.) Lecture 2 : « Induction, in my judgment, is not in any sense a matter of quantity. »
• HARRIMAN David, The Logical Leap (op. cit.), chap. 1 « The Foundation », section « Perceiving First-Level Causal Connections », p. 24 : « The sheer observation of a regularity, without any grasp of its cause, does not establish a generalization. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Certainty« , dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 5, Q&A : « True knowledge would be if you started off with “Eight out of ten people are helped by this medicine.” And then, you know what the question that a true scientist who wanted knowledge would ask when he heard that eight out of ten are helped by this medicine? What about the other two? That is an essential you would have to ask before you could say you’re entering the realm of knowledge. And if you find that they have different genes, different chemistry, different physiology, took poison before the medicine, and you can get a true un-exceptionless generalization, and then you can integrate from those ten to others, and you can find something in the nature of the entity that would explain it, then you are in the field of knowledge. But you cannot take unexplained empirical observations, notice an inexplicable, unintelligible pattern, and then say, “Now I know that field.” I mean, it’s not mysticism; it isn’t anything. It’s playing at the periphery of induction without taking the responsibility to turn it into knowledge. »

La raison et ses concurrents

[30:08] Formation des concepts de la conscience

• « Concepts of Consciousness » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 29-30 : « Two fundamental attributes are involved in every state, aspect or function of man’s consciousness: content and action—the content of awareness, and the action of consciousness in regard to that content. These two attributes are the fundamental Conceptual Common Denominator of all concepts pertaining to consciousness. […] In the realm of introspection, the concretes, the units which are integrated into a single concept, are the specific instances of a given psychological process. The measurable attributes of a psychological process are its object or content and its intensity. The content is some aspect of the external world (or is derived from some aspect of the external world) and is measurable by the various methods of measurement applicable to the external world. The intensity of a psychological process is the automatically summed up result of many factors: of its scope, its clarity, its cognitive and motivational context, the degree of mental energy or effort required, etc. »

[31:13] Ce qu’est la raison

• Voir plus bas, la source : « Citation de Rand sur la raison et la logique ».
• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 20 : « The process of concept-formation does not consist merely of grasping a few simple abstractions, such as “chair,” “table,” “hot,” “cold,” and of learning to speak. It consists of a method of using one’s consciousness, best designated by the term “conceptualizing.” It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking. Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, The Ominous Parallels (Briarcliff Manor, NY: Scarborough House, 1982), chap. 16 « A Republic—If You Can Keep It », p. 332 : « The senses, concepts, logic: these are the elements of man’s rational faculty—its start, its form, its method. In essence, “follow reason” means: base knowledge on observation; form concepts according to the actual (measurable) relationships among concretes; use concepts according to the rules of logic (ultimately, the Law of Identity). Since each of these elements is based on the facts of reality, the conclusions reached by a process of reason are objective. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 5 « Reason », p. 152 : « [R]eason is the faculty that enables man to discover the nature of existents—by virtue of its power to condense sensory information in accordance with the requirements of an objective mode of cognition. Or: reason is the faculty that organizes perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic. This formulation highlights the three elements essential to the faculty: its data, percepts; its form, concepts; its method, logic. »

[31:52] Les concepts de méthode

• « Concepts of Consciousness » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 35-36 : « Concepts of method designate systematic courses of action devised by men for the purpose of achieving certain goals. The course of action may be purely psychological (such as a method of using one’s consciousness) or it may involve a combination of psychological and physical actions (such as a method of drilling for oil), according to the goal to be achieved. Concepts of method are formed by retaining the distinguishing characteristics of the purposive course of action and of its goal, while omitting the particular measurements of both. »

[32:18] Ce qu’est la logique

• « Philosophical Detection » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 17 : « Logic is the art or skill of non-contradictory identification. Logic has a single law, the Law of Identity, and its various corollaries. »
• « Concepts of Consciousness » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 36 : « [T]he fundamental concept of method, the one on which all the others depend, is logic. The distinguishing characteristic of logic (the art of non-contradictory identification) indicates the nature of the actions (actions of consciousness required to achieve a correct identification) and their goal (knowledge)… »
• BINSWANGER Harry, How We Know (op. cit.), chap. 11 « Overview », p. 388 : « Logic is a necessary condition of knowing, but not a sufficient one. It is not illogical to conclude that the stick half-submerged in water is bent, but the fact remains that the stick is not bent. »
• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (New York, New American Library / Penguin Group USA Inc., 2005), chap. 3, p. 168 : « Logic can be used out of context, and you can analyze whether a man used his mind logically or not, regardless of the morality of his action. But that is irrelevant to the issue of rationality. The primary meaning of “rationality” is: context-keeping. A man cannot be rational out of context, though he may be “logical” out of context, in a particular case. Logic is a method; rationality is a mental attitude—a use of one’s mind that does not permit a single act of evasion, and therefore does not permit context-dropping. »
• Voir plus bas, la source : « Citation de Rand sur la raison et la logique ».

[33:02] Lien entre la perception et la raison

• « Faith and Force » (1960), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 75 : « Reason integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man’s knowledge from the perceptual level, which he shares with animals, to the conceptual level, which he alone can reach. »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Faith and Force » (conférence donnée en 1961), enregistrement SoundCloud [32:27] : « Reason rests necessarily on the self-evident proof of your senses, that which you perceive—not on your sense data or sensations, but on your percepts […]. That is the start of human knowledge. That has to be taken as the self-evident, because that is the content of your consciousness, and you cannot talk about consciousness without identifying the fact that your consciousness starts with the perception of object and entities of the material world outside of you. Then you have to know what reason is, and reason is an issue of forming abstractions by means of specific and absolute definitions, abstracting from your perceptual material that which you have observed certain entities to possess in common or that which differentiates certain entities, and you form abstractions. »
• Day at Night, 29 mars 1974. [02:45] : « You don’t smell or touch with your reason. That’s the material which your reason integrates into concepts. »
• Workshops sur l’épistémologie Objectiviste (1969), cité dans ibid., Part IV, chap. 12 « Objectivist Epistemology », p. 276-277 : « One of the cardinal points I make throughout is that, to be valid, the most abstract concept—the concept that is removed from concretes by a long conceptual, hierarchical chain—has to be broken down, analyzed, brought back to the perceptually given. If it cannot be brought back, it is not a valid concept. Or, what is more practical, if a person using a concept cannot indicate specifically on what aspects (ultimately resting on the perceptually given) his concept rests—if he cannot bring it back down to earth—then he is using his concepts improperly and the deductions or conclusions he will make from them are improper. »
• LENNOX James G., « Who Sets the Tone for a Culture?« , dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (Chichester / Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons, 2016), Part 5, chap. 13, p. 324-325 : « Rand defended the view that “reason” refers to the cognitive faculty that integrates our perceptual awareness of reality into concepts, links those concepts into propositions, and makes logical inferences on the basis of those concepts and propositions. Reason, so understood, was the standard Rand used in deciding whether someone was a defender of reason or not. Thus when Plato, Kant, and their followers champion in the name of “reason” a faculty that either transcends the perceptual world or is cut off from it, Rand does not hesitate to describe them as mystics and enemies of reason. »

[34:12] Citation de Rand sur la raison et la logique

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1016-1017 : « Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind. All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object: he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality. »

[36:33] Suprématie de la raison

• « Introducing Objectivism » (1962), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 4 : « Reason […] is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival. « 
• « The Left: Old and New » (1970), dans Return of the Primitive (New York: Meridian / Penguin Group, 1999), p. 162 : « Reason is man’s only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge—and, therefore, the rejection of reason means that men should act regardless of and/or in contradiction to the facts of reality. »
• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 16 : « Man’s essential characteristic is his rational faculty. Man’s mind is his basic means of survival—his only means of gaining knowledge… »
• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (New York, Signet / New American Library, 1964), chap. 1, p. 25 : « The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action. »

[36:52] Disqualification des concurrents

• « First Philosophic Journal », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 1 « Early Project », chap. 3, entrée du 9 avril 1934, p. 68 : « Anyone who demands that anything be taken on faith—or relies on any super-mental, super-logical instinct—denies all reason. »
• « Notes While Writing: 1947-1952 », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 4 « Atlas Shrugged », chap. 13, entrée du 8 mars 1947, p. 558 : « But the irrationalist holds his emotions (or “instincts,” “hunches,” “revelations,” “extra-sensory perceptions,” etc.) above his reason; he fights his reason with them. And of course, he’s done for. »
• « Kant versus Sullivan » (1970), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 9, p. 108 : »[A]n advocate of reason does not ask that his knowledge be granted equality with the intuitions and revelations of mystics. »
• « Art and Cognition », dans The Romantic Manifesto (Second Revised Edition, New York, Signet / New American Library, 1975), chap. 4, p. 69-70 : « “Because I felt like it” is not a definition or validation of anything. There is no place for whim in any human activity—if it is to be regarded as human. There is no place for the unknowable, the unintelligible, the undefinable, the non-objective in any human product. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York, Dutton, 1991),  chap. 5, « Reason », p. 160 : « Others, however, seeming to eschew reason and emotion, uphold the cognitive efficacy of a variety of candidates, such as intuition, revelation, dialectic inference, Aryan instinct, extrasensory perception, or drug-induced trances. The elements of reason are objectively identifiable; abstractions such as “percept,” “concept,” and “logic” are reducible to the data of observation. But abstractions such as “intuition,” “revelation,” and the rest, precisely because they purport to name a faculty that transcends reason, cannot be given objective definition; there is no logical chain linking such abstractions to sensory data. As a result, there is no objective means by which to use or apply such terms. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 782 : [Un personnage fictif parle.] « I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively—or blindly. I do not care for blindness in any form… »

[37:13] Les émotions ne sont pas des outils cognitifs

• Interview avec Pr. James McConnell, University of Michigan Television, 1961, enregistrement YouTube [26:45] : « The first premise, the relationship of reason to emotion means: a man, if he wants to be an intellectual has to learn how to differentiate his thinking, his reasoned judgement, from his emotions, wishes, hopes, fear or whim. He must learn that feelings, emotions, are not tools of cognition. That emotions are the product of his premises. They are not a guide to reality, they are not a form of knowledge and perception. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy, mars 1964 : « Emotions are not tools of cognition. What you feel tells you nothing about the facts; it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. Emotions are the result of your value judgments; they are caused by your basic premises, which you may hold consciously or subconsciously, which may be right or wrong. […] An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man’s value premises. An effect, not a cause. »
• Lettre à Gerald Loeb du 5 août 1944, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (New York, Plume, 1997), « Return to Hollywood », p. 156-157 : « Thinking has nothing to do with emotions. That most people let their emotions interfere in their rational processes is true. But what does that mean? That means only that they cannot think properly. That does not mean that thinking is emotional. »
• « Philosophy: Who Needs It » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 7-8 : « The quality of a computer’s output is determined by the quality of its input. If your subconscious is programmed by chance, its output will have a corresponding character. You have probably heard the computer operators’ eloquent term “gigo”—which means: “Garbage in, garbage out.” The same formula applies to the relationship between a man’s thinking and his emotions. A man who is run by emotions is like a man who is run by a computer whose print-outs he cannot read. He does not know whether its programming is true or false, right or wrong, whether it’s set to lead him to success or destruction, whether it serves his goals or those of some evil, unknowable power. He is blind on two fronts: blind to the world around him and to his own inner world, unable to grasp reality or his own motives, and he is in chronic terror of both. Emotions are not tools of cognition. »

[37:49] Pas d’antagonisme nécessaire entre raison et émotion

• « Apollo and Dionysus » (1969), dans Return of the Primitive (op. cit.), p. 100 : « It is not true that reason and emotion are irreconcilable antagonists or that emotions are a wild, unknowable, ineffable element in men. But this is what emotions become for those who do not care to know what they feel, and who attempt to subordinate reason to their emotions. »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Apollo and Dionysus » (conférence au Ford Hall Forum, 1969), enregistrement YouTube [01:47:44] : « I deny the existence of any dichotomy between reason and emotion. […] Emotions are the product of your thinking or your evasions. Emotions are the result of your rational faculty. They’re created by you, either chosen consciously or subconsciously. They are a subconscious response but they are directed by your conscious mind, therefore I do not believe there is a dichotomy. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy, mars 1964 : « There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man’s reason and his emotions—provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. […] He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies; they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. »
• Lettre à John Hospers du 3 janvier 1961, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « Letters to a philosopher », p. 526 : « [D]o you accept reason vs. emotions as a dichotomy? I grant that such conflicts can and do exist, but not that they have to exist. In a man of fully rational, fully integrated convictions, emotions follow the judgments of reason as an unforced, automatic response. »
• The Tonight Show avec Johnny Carson, octobre 1967, enregistrement YouTube [21:25] : « Do you mean that all emotions are necessarily irrational? I don’t. I simply mean that man has to be guided by reason, and if he chooses only rational values, he will not experience irrational emotions. Then his emotions and his mind will be unified. I believe it is only a fully rational man who can feel profoundly, because he has no inner conflicts. »

[38:04] Les concurrents à la raison sont réductibles à l’émotion

• « The Foundations of Morality », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 19, p. 142 : « [M]ost systems of philosophy […] are deliberately irrational, on principle. They are anti-rational. With very rare exceptions, they denounce reason as limited, misleading or false. They advocate some form of revelation, which simply means the formation of ideas by means of emotions. If men do not function by means of reason, their only alternative—the only other psychological faculty they possess—is their feelings. But emotions are not tools of cognition. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « Mental Health versus Mysticism » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness, chap. 2, p. 37 : « A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chap. 5 « Reason », p. 160-161 : « How is a man to know that the voice he hears comes from God or a noetic trance or the blood of the master race, whereas the voice heard by his enemy, who claims an opposite message from the same source, is a delusion or a fake? The perennial answer is: the man simply knows. How? He feels it. How does he know that his enemy’s claim is mistaken? He feels it. How does he know that these feelings of his are reliable? He feels it. When a person declares that reason is not man’s only means of knowledge, he ends up, admittedly or not, counting on emotion as his means of knowledge. Emotion is the only function left to guide human consciousness once one sets aside the mind’s sensory and conceptual activities. »

[38:37] L’homme naît tabula rasa

• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 28 : « Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are—“tabula rasa.” It is man’s cognitive faculty, his mind, that—determines the content of both. »
• « The Comprachicos » (1970), dans Return of the Primitive (op. cit.), p. 54 : « At birth, a child’s mind is tabula rasa; he has the potential of awareness—the mechanism of a human consciousness—but no content. Speaking metaphorically, he has a camera with an extremely sensitive, unexposed film (his conscious mind), and an extremely complex computer waiting to be programmed (his subconscious). Both are blank. He knows nothing of the external world. »
• « Education », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 90 : « As Aristotle identified, a human being is born tabula rasa—that is, he has cognitive apparatus, but it is empty of content. A child’s ideas, values and character develop as he gains knowledge; there is nothing pre-set in his mind. He is not a savage at birth, nor is he a moral ideal. A child is born blank, cognitively and morally. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chap. 2 « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 38 : « Since concepts, according to Objectivism, are integrations of perceptual data, there can be no concepts apart from sense experience. There are no innate ideas, ideas in the mind at birth. Consciousness begins as a tabula rasa (a blank slate); all of its conceptual content is derived from the evidence of the senses. »

[39:34] L’homme n’a pas d’instinct

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1013 : « An “instinct” is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man’s desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy, mars 1964 : « To begin with, man does not possess any instincts. […] A man is equipped with a certain kind of physical mechanism and certain needs, but without any knowledge of how to fulfill them. For instance, man needs food. He experiences hunger. But, unless he learns first to identify this hunger, then to know that he needs food and how to obtain it, he will starve. The need, the hunger, will not tell him how to satisfy it. Man is born with certain physical and psychological needs, but he can neither discover them nor satisfy them without the use of his mind. Man has to discover what is right or wrong for him as a rational being. His so-called urges will not tell him what to do. »
• « The Anti-industrial Revolution » (1971), dans Return of the Primitive (op. cit.), p. 277 : « [Man] is born naked and unarmed, without fangs, claws, horns or “instinctual” knowledge. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « Does Man Possess Instincts? », dans The Objectivist Newsletter, octobre 1962, vol. 1, n° 10 : « If such a thing as an “instinct” could exist, it could be only some sort of innate, automatic knowledge, some sort of “frozen intelligence” inscribed in the nervous system at birth. Instinct theory thus amounts to a resurrection of the doctrine of innate ideas, which has been thoroughly discredited by both philosophy and biology, as a legacy of mysticism. »

[39:47] Ce qu’est le mysticisme

• « Faith and Force » (1960), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 75-76 : « Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason. Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as “instinct,” “intuition,” “revelation,” or any form of “just knowing.” »
• Lettre à John Hospers du 3 janvier 1961, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « Letters to a philosopher », p. 530 : « You ask what is our definition of the term “mystic.” Our definition is: “Anyone who claims some nonsensory, non-rational, nondefinable means of knowledge.” This includes the three groups you listed: those who doubt the validity of the senses (by means of what faculty do they doubt it?)—those who claim to have a sixth sense (what is that sixth sense?)—those who claim that something is true because they feel it (are feelings a tool of cognition?). There are many others. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1034 : « The mystics of both schools […] attack you through a single sore: your fear of relying on your mind. They tell you that they possess a means of knowledge higher than the mind, a mode of consciousness superior to reason—like a special pull with some bureaucrat of the universe who gives them secret tips withheld from others. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chap. 5 « Reason », p. 182 : « Mysticism is the theory that man has a means of knowledge other than sense perception or reason, such as revelation, faith, intuition, and the like. As we have seen, this theory reduces to emotionalism. »

[40:00] Le scepticisme rejoint le mysticisme

• « Consciousness and Identity » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 79 : « Men have been taught either that knowledge is impossible (skepticism) or that it is available without effort (mysticism). These two positions appear to be antagonists, but are, in fact, two variants on the same theme, two sides of the same fraudulent coin: the attempt to escape the responsibility of rational cognition and the absolutism of reality—the attempt to assert the primacy of consciousness over existence. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chap. 5 « Reason », p. 183 : « If mysticism advocates the promiscuous acceptance of ideas, skepticism advocates their promiscuous doubt. The mystic “just knows” whatever he wants to believe; the skeptic “just doesn’t know” whatever he wants not to believe. The operative term and guiding force here is “wants,” i.e., feeling. Both viewpoints reduce to emotionalism; both represent the reliance on feeling as a cognitive guide. Both represent a denial of man’s need of logic and an enshrinement of the arbitrary. »

Intégration, contexte et hiérarchie

[40:44] Citation de Rand sur les niveaux d’intégrations

• « Applying Philosophy Without Preaching It » (1969), dans The Art of NonFiction (New York: Plume / Penguin Putnam, 2001), chap. 4, p. 27 : « Man rises above the perceptual level by integrating his percepts into concepts, his concepts into principles, his principles into sciences, and all of his sciences into a philosophy. »

[41:03] Penser, c’est établir des connexions

• « The Hollywood Years », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 1 « Early Project », chap. 3, février 1928, p. 24 : « A clear mind sees things and the connections between them. »
• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 20 : « It consists of a method of using one’s consciousness, best designated by the term “conceptualizing.” It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chap. 4 « Objectivity », p. 122-123 : « Human knowledge on every level is relational. It is an organization of elements, each relevant to and bearing on the others. Knowledge is not a juxtaposition of independent items; it is a unity. It is not a heap of self-sufficient atoms of consciousness, each of which can exist or be dealt with apart from the rest. On the contrary, knowledge at each stage is a total, a sum, a single whole. »

[41:31] Comprendre, c’est intégrer

• « The Comprachicos » (1970), dans Return of the Primitive (op. cit.), p. 68 : « To understand means to focus on the content of a given subject (as against the sensory—visual or auditory—form in which it is communicated), to isolate its essentials, to establish its relationship to the previously known, and to integrate it with the appropriate categories of other subjects. Integration is the essential part of understanding. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Thinking in Principles » (1992), dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 4 : « If you see what’s needed for peaches in New Mexico and carrots in Arizona, you’re just collecting data. But when you see all those concretes together, when you integrate into “A living organism needs such and such conditions,” then you understand. So it’s the exact same pattern. Understanding is nothing more than integration. »

[41:59] Toute forme de raisonnement est une intégration

• HARRIMAN David, The Logical Leap (op. cit.), chap. 2 « Experimental Method », p. 53 : « Integration is the process of uniting a complexity of elements into a whole. Cognitive integration is the very essence of human thought, from concept-formation (an integration of a limitless number of concretes into a whole designated by a word), to induction (an integration of a limitless number of causal sequences into a generalization), to deduction (the integration of premises into a conclusion). An item of knowledge is acquired and validated by means of grasping its relation to the whole of one’s knowledge. A thinker always seeks to relate, grasp hidden similarities, discover connections, unify. A conceptual consciousness is an integrating mechanism, and its product—knowledge—is an interconnected system, not a heap of isolated propositions. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Hierarchy« , dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.) Lecture 2 : « Let us take the processes of deduction and induction as further examples— those are our two formal reasoning processes—and illustrate in what way they are examples of integration. Take the classic Socrates syllogism: “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal.” In what way is that process of deduction an example or a type of integration? “Integration” means putting together into a unity. What things am I putting together? I have a general principle, “All men are mortal.” Does that say anything about Socrates? Well, not explicitly. It just says, “If something is a man, then it’s mortal.” Then I add one observation: “Socrates is a man.” Now, if I put those two together, unite them, what conclusion then is inevitable? “Socrates is mortal.” So in a case like that, you’re uniting a particular observation with a general principle. That form of integration is called “deduction.” If you simply stare at “Socrates is a man,” you wouldn’t be integrating it, you wouldn’t be thinking about it. But if you see it an instance of some broad principle, as an instance of the concept “man,” as soon as you reach out to connect it to something else, you are engaged in thought, and that means you are engaged in integration. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1016 : « All thinking is a process of identification and integration. »

[42:07] Nos idées ont besoin d’être intégrées

• « Philosophy: Who Needs It » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 6 : « You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. […] But the principles you accept (consciously or subconsciously) may clash with or contradict one another; they, too, have to be integrated. »
• « Philosophy and Sense of Life » (1966), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 16 : « The enormously powerful integrating mechanism of man’s consciousness is there at birth; his only choice is to drive it or to be driven by it. »
• « Cognition and Measurement » (1966), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 5 : « Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a passive state, but an active process that consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1016 : « No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Thinking in Principles » (1992), dans The Art of Thinking (op. cit.), Lecture 4 : « You can’t avoid some kind of generalizations, and you can’t even avoid integrating them, because with the crow epistemology, you couldn’t function at all. So this is not an option in the basic sense. But, of course, you have to do it correctly. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « Mental Health versus Mysticism » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness, chap. 2, p. 37-38 : « To introduce into one’s consciousness any idea that cannot be so integrated, an idea not derived from reality, not validated by a process of reason, not subject to rational examination or judgment—and worse: an idea that clashes with the rest of one’s concepts and understanding of reality—is to sabotage the integrative function of consciousness, to undercut the rest of one’s convictions and kill one’s capacity to be certain of anything. »
• Voir aussi sur ce blog : « L’intégration : la clef pour comprendre l’Objectivisme« .

[42:11] L’abstraction flottante

• « How to Develop Plot Ability » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (New York: Plume, 2000), chap. 6, p. 52 : »In your daily life, in thinking, and in reading, you deal constantly with wide abstractions. If you have only a general idea of how to concretize these, they are “floating abstractions.” If you can name one or two concretes under some concept, but no more, it is a semifloating abstraction. You do have some knowledge of how it applies to reality, but your understanding is very limited. For instance, if you are asked what you mean by “independence,” and you say, “A man who thinks for himself,” that is one good concrete. Much more is necessary, however, in order to understand such an abstraction as “independence.” »
• BRANDEN Barbara, « The Conceptual Level of Consciousness, part 2 » (1962), conférence dans la série Principles of Efficient Thinking (op. cit.) : « To hold floating abstractions is to fail to integrate one’s concepts to reality, to the facts to which they pertain. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 3, « Concept-Formation », p. 96 : « This is Ayn Rand’s term for concepts detached from existents, concepts that a person takes over from other men without knowing what specific units the concepts denote. A floating abstraction is not an integration of factual data; it is a memorized linguistic custom representing in the person’s mind a hash made of random concretes, habits, and feelings that blend imperceptibly into other hashes which are the content of other, similarly floating abstractions. The “concepts” of such a mind are not cognitive devices. They are parrotlike imitations of language backed in essence by patches of fog. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 4, « Objectivity », p. 127 : « [A]ll knowledge is interconnected. To cut off a single field—any field—from the rest of cognition is to drop the vast context which makes that field possible and which anchors it to reality. The ultimate result, as with any failure of integration, is floating abstractions and self-contradiction. »

[42:23] Le rejet de l’arbitraire

• « Consciousness and Identity » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 87 : « [T]here is no room for the arbitrary in any activity of man, least of all in his method of cognition… »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 5 « Reason », p. 164 : « An arbitrary statement has no relation to man’s means of knowledge. Since the statement is detached from the realm of evidence, no process of logic can assess it. Since it is affirmed in a void, cut off from any context, no integration to the rest of man’s knowledge is applicable; previous knowledge is irrelevant to it. Since it has no place in a hierarchy, no reduction is possible, and thus no observations are relevant. An arbitrary statement cannot be cognitively processed; by its nature, it is detached from any rational method or content of human consciousness. Such a statement is necessarily detached from reality as well. If an idea is cut loose from any means of cognition, there is no way of bringing it into relationship with reality. »
• BINSWANGER Harry, How We Know (op. cit.), chap. 8 « Proof and Certainty », p. 298 : « An idea may be unintegrable for either of two reasons: 1° it involves a contradiction, or 2° it is arbitrary — i.e., there is no means to integrate it. »

[42:34] Le doute ne peut être arbitraire

• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Objectivist Answers to Selected Philosophic Problems » (1972), dans Founders of Western Philosophy (Santa Ana, CA: Ayn Rand Institute Press, 2023), Lecture 12, section « The Error of the Method of Cartesian Doubt » : « The valid procedure would recognize that to doubt without a basis is the epistemological equivalent of—and is, in fact, a form of—asserting without a basis. Both are arbitrary, both are epistemologically disqualified by the very nature of human cognition. The truth is that to establish certainty, all you have to do is prove positively on the basis of the full context of evidence available that your conclusion is true. In other words, you have to prove that you are right; it is not incumbent upon you to prove that you are not wrong when no evidence of error has been produced. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Maybe You’re Wrong » (1981), dans Why Act on Principle? (op. cit.), chap. 2 : « “Maybe you’re wrong” is an accusation that must be supported by specific evidence. It cannot be uttered without context, grounds, or basis, i.e., arbitrarily. Precisely because man is fallible and needs to validate his conclusions by a process of reason, arbitrary assertions are invalid and improper. This applies to all truth-claims, whether they purport to identify the actual or the possible; in either case, the claim must be supported by evidence. »

[42:23] La connaissance progresse par contextualisation

• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 42-43 : « Concepts are not and cannot be formed in a vacuum; they are formed in a context; the process of conceptualization consists of observing the differences and similarities of the existents within the field of one’s awareness (and organizing them into concepts accordingly). From a child’s grasp of the simplest concept integrating a group of perceptually given concretes, to a scientist’s grasp of the most complex abstractions integrating long conceptual chains—all conceptualization is a contextual process; the context is the entire field of a mind’s awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development. […] If his grasp is non-contradictory, then even if the scope of his knowledge is modest and the content of his concepts is primitive, it will not contradict the content of the same concepts in the mind of the most advanced scientists. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 5 « Reason », p. 173-174 : « The appearance of a contradiction between new knowledge and old derives from a single source: context-dropping. If the researchers had decided to view their initial discovery as an out-of-context absolute; if they were to declare—in effect, as a matter of dogma: “A bloods will always be compatible, regardless of altered circumstances”; then of course the next factor discovered would plunge them into contradiction, and they would end up complaining that knowledge is impossible. But if a man reaches conclusions logically and grasps their contextual nature, intellectual progress poses no threat to him; it consists to a great extent in his identifying ever more fully the relationships, the connections among facts, that make the world a unity. »
• BINSWANGER Harry, How We Know (op. cit.), chap. 8 « Proof and Certainty », p. 266 : « A slightly different line of attack on certainty is found in the popular notion that the discovery of new conditions demolishes conclusions that did not countenance them, as in the idea that “Swans are white” was demolished by the discovery of black swans in Australia, or that Newton’s law of gravity was refuted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. But neither discovery destroyed any previous knowledge; in fact, both discoveries expanded the previously existing body of knowledge. The generalization “Swans are white” could not logically have warranted making the assertion: “There are no black swans anywhere in the world.” That is not what was known at the earlier stage. The new knowledge is: “Swans are white, except in Australia where some are black.” Thus, the end result is more knowledge, not less. Similarly, Newton’s law of gravity was supplemented, not refuted, by Einstein, because that law never extended to the kind of conditions (super-huge masses and/or submicroscopic distances of separation) that Einstein’s theory embraces. »

[44:40] Compatibilité de l’absolu et du contextuel

• « Two Possible Books », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 5 « Final Years », chap. 16, entrée du 20 juin 1958, « Fallacies », p. 701 : « [A] variant or corollary fallacy is the idea that considering a thing in context is a “relativistic” premise, thus: if values are selected by man, they are “relative” to man. This is an example of the “whose whim” fallacy: either values are intrinsic (arbitrarily set by the whim of God or nature)—or they are subjective (“relative” to or set by the whim of man); the concept of objectivism (of an immutable nature of things) is missing. The reasoning behind it goes like this: if a thing has to be considered in a context, then it is not an absolute, then anything goes. The error is: the substitution of infinity for a given, known context. Example: [a philosophy professor] claiming that the airplane invalidates the absolutism of the law of gravitation. »
• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 47 : « Since man is not omniscient, a definition cannot be changelessly absolute, because it cannot establish the relationship of a given group of existents to everything else in the universe, including the undiscovered and unknown. And for the very same reasons, a definition is false and worthless if it is not contextually absolute—if it does not specify the known relationships among existents […] or if it contradicts the known… »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 5 « Reason », p. 174-175 : « Although the researchers cannot claim their discovery as an out-of-context absolute, they must treat it as a contextual absolute (i.e., as an immutable truth within the specified context). […] Conceptual knowledge rests on logic within a context, not on omniscience. If an idea has been logically proved, then it is valid and it is an absolute—contextually. This last term, indeed, does not introduce a factor distinct from logic and should not have to be stressed: to adduce evidence for a conclusion is to place it within a context and thereby to define precisely the conditions of its applicability. […] The modern definition of “absolute” represents the rejection of a rational metaphysics and epistemology. It is the inversion of a crucial truth: relationships are not the enemy of absolutism; they are what make it possible. We prove a conclusion on the basis of facts logically related to it and then integrate it into the sum of our knowledge. […] Contextualism does not mean relativism. It means the opposite. The fact of context does not weaken human conclusions or make them vulnerable to overthrow. On the contrary, context is precisely what makes a (properly specified) conclusion invulnerable. »

[45:40] Contradiction du relativisme

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1039 : « “There are no absolutes,” they chatter, blanking out the fact that they are uttering an absolute. »

[45:50] La certitude est contextuelle

• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Objectivist Answers to Selected Philosophic Problems » (1972), dans Founders of Western Philosophy (op. cit.), Lecture 12, section « The Error of the Method of Cartesian Doubt » : « A conclusion is certain, according to Objectivism, when all of the available evidence in a given context of knowledge leads to that one conclusion, and no evidence suggests even a possibility of an alternative conclusion. There are innumerable cases where this is so, and there are, therefore, innumerable cases of valid human certainty. »
• BINSWANGER Harry, How We Know (op. cit.), chap. 8 « Proof and Certainty », p. 272 : « Thus, certainty is contextual. “Conclusive evidence” means “evidence that is sufficient within a given context of knowledge,” not with an impossible omniscience as its standard. […] In a given context of knowledge, the evidence for a conclusion is conclusive, rendering the conclusion certain, when the totality of the evidence logically requires it. That is, within a properly delimited field of alternative hypotheses, only one conclusion explains and is consistent with all the data, all the other hypotheses being excluded as contradicting some or all of that data. In such a case, the evidence, taken as an integrated sum, supports and is consistent with one and only one conclusion. That conclusion is then contextually certain. »
• Pour plus de détails, voir PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 5, « Reason », section « Certainty as Contextual », p. 171-181.

[46:20] La connaissance a une structure hiérarchique

• « Philosophical Detection » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 14 : « A philosophical detective must remember that all human knowledge has a hierarchical structure; he must learn to distinguish the fundamental from the derivative… »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 4 « Objectivity », section « Knowledge as Hierarchical », p. 131 : « Knowledge, therefore, has a hierarchical structure. […] A hierarchy of knowledge means a body of concepts and conclusions ranked in order of logical dependence, one upon another, according to each item’s distance from the base of the structure. The base is the perceptual data with which cognition begins. »
• « Abstraction from Abstractions », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 22 : « Observe that the concept “furniture” is an abstraction one step further removed from perceptual reality than any of its constituent concepts. […] The meaning of “furniture” cannot be grasped unless one has first grasped the meaning of its constituent concepts; these are its link to reality. (On the lower levels of an unlimited conceptual chain, this is an illustration of the hierarchical structure of concepts.) »
• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 40 : « Since the definition of a concept is formulated in terms of other concepts, it enables man, not only to identify and retain a concept, but also to establish the relationships, the hierarchy, the integration of all his concepts and thus the integration of his knowledge. Definitions preserve, not the chronological order in which a given man may have learned concepts, but the logical order of their hierarchical interdependence. »

[48:30] On ne peut demander une preuve de la raison ou des axiomes

• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Faith and Force » (conférence donnée en 1961), enregistrement SoundCloud [33:33] : « When you come to the concept of “proof”, it is a concept which hierarchically is based on and depends on the concepts of reason, axioms, and evidence. To prove something is to lead it by means of logic down to a fundamental axiom. […] Now to speak of “proving reason” or “proving the laws of logic” is a conceptual contradiction in terms. Reason and logic is that by which you prove something; they are primary. It, in itself, is the primary or the base. »
• Lettre à un prêtre catholique du 20 mars 1965, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « The Later Years », p. 633 : « The Law of Identity is an axiom; so is the Law of Contradiction. The concept of proof presupposes the existence of axioms from which such proof is derived. The laws of logic are the means by which one proves the truth of one’s statements; the demand that one “prove” the laws of logic is a contradiction in terms. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 5 « Reason », p. 153 : « One cannot seek a proof that reason is reliable, because reason is the faculty of proof; one must accept and use reason in any attempt to prove anything. But, using reason, one can identify its relationship to the facts of reality and thereby validate the faculty. »

Les sophismes

[49:22] Les sophismes classiques de la philosophie

• Pour la typologie des sophismes établie par Aristote, voir les Réfutations Sophistiques dans Organon, livre VI.
• Pour une typologie plus moderne, voir PEIKOFF Leonard, « Informal Fallacies, Part 1 » et « Informal Fallacies, Part 2 » dans la série de conférences Introduction to Logic (1974).

[49:53] La réification du néant

• « Axiomatic Concepts » (1966), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 60-61 : « A vulgar variant of concept stealing, prevalent among avowed mystics and irrationalists, is a fallacy I call the Reification of the Zero. It consists of regarding « nothing » as a thing, as a special, different kind of existent. (For example, see Existentialism.) This fallacy breeds such symptoms as the notion that presence and absence, or being and non-being, are metaphysical forces of equal power, and that being is the absence of non-being. E.g., “Nothingness is prior to being.” (Sartre)—“Human finitude is the presence of the not in the being of man.” (William Barrett)—“Nothing is more real than nothing.” (Samuel Beckett)—“Das Nichts nichtet” or “Nothing noughts.” (Heidegger). Consciousness, then, is not a stuff, but a negation. The subject is not a thing, but a non-thing. The subject carves its own world out of Being by means of negative determinations. Sartre describes consciousness as a “noughting nought” (néant néantisant). It is a form of being other than its own: a mode “which has yet to be what it is, that is to say, which is what it is, that is to say, which is what it is not and which is not what it is.” (Hector Hawton, The Feast of Unreason, London: Watts & Co., 1952, p. 162.)

[50:12] Le vol de concept

• Note de bas de page dans « Philosophical Detection », publié dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 26 : « The “stolen concept” fallacy, first identified by Ayn Rand, is the fallacy of using a concept while denying the validity of its genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) on which it logically depends. »
• « Two Possible Books », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 5 « Final Years », chap. 16, entrée du 15 décembre 1960, p. 704 : « “[T]he stolen concept” is the other side, the reverse, of “petitio principii.” If this last is “begging the question” or “assuming that which you are attempting to prove,” then “the stolen concept” is “begging the answer” or “assuming that which you are attempting to disprove.” (Many instances of “the stolen concept” are, in fact, instances of “petitio principii,” such as [Bertrand] Russell’s attempt to derive the concept “unit” from [the concept] “group,” which, throughout the whole reasoning, presupposes knowledge of the concept “unit.” But such instances are merely fraudulent attempts to prove something; the most important part of “the stolen concept” is its application to the fraudulent attempts to disprove something, particularly to disprove basic axioms. This is the worst of the fallacies in modern philosophy.) »
• « Axiomatic Concepts » (1966), dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 59-60 : « When modern philosophers declare that axioms are a matter of arbitrary choice, and proceed to choose complex, derivative concepts as the alleged axioms of their alleged reasoning, one can observe that their statements imply and depend on “existence,” “consciousness,” “identity,” which they profess to negate, but which are smuggled into their arguments in the form of unacknowledged, “stolen” concepts. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1039 : « As they feed on stolen wealth in body, so they feed on stolen concepts in mind, and proclaim that honesty consists of refusing to know that one is stealing. As they use effects while denying causes, so they use our concepts while denying the roots and the existence of the concepts they are using. As they seek, not to build, but to take over industrial plants, so they seek, not to think, but to take over human thinking. As they proclaim that the only requirement for running a factory is the ability to turn the cranks of the machines, and blank out the question of who created the factory—so they proclaim that there are no entities, that nothing exists but motion, and blank out the fact that motion presupposes the thing which moves, that without the concept of entity, there can be no such concept as “motion.” As they proclaim their right to consume the unearned, and blank out the question of who’s to produce it—so they proclaim that there is no law of identity, that nothing exists but change, and blank out the fact that change presupposes the concepts of what changes, from what and to what, that without the law of identity no such concept as “change” is possible. As they rob an industrialist while denying his value, so they seek to seize power over all of existence while denying that existence exists. »
• Voir aussi BRANDEN Nathaniel, « The Stolen Concept« , dans The Objectivist Newsletter, janvier 1963, vol. 2, n° 1.

[51:30] La décontextualisation

• « Two Possible Books », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 5 « Final Years », chap. 16, entrée du 15 décembre 1960, p. 704 : « The two most important fallacies which I must define thoroughly are, in effect, extensions of two of the fallacies defined by Aristotle: “context-dropping’’ is really the wider (and more modem) name for Aristotle’s “ignoratio elenchi”… »
• « The Conflicts of Men’s Interests » (1962), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 51 : « [A] rational man does not hold any conviction out of context—that is: without relating it to the rest of his knowledge and resolving any possible contradictions… […] Context-dropping is one of the chief psychological tools of evasion. »
• « Egalitarianism and Inflation » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 157 : « Trained in college to believe that to look beyond the immediate moment—to look for causes or to foresee consequences—is impossible, modern men have developed context-dropping as their normal method of cognition. »
• Lettre à John Hospers du 3 janvier 1961, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « Letters to a philosopher », p. 527 : « I have mentioned to you that we challenge and reject the proposition that truth is a matter of propositions—or that knowledge is acquired by proving or disproving single sentences. We call that approach “context-dropping.” »
• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 168 : « The primary meaning of “rationality” is: context-keeping. A man cannot be rational out of context, though he may be “logical” out of context, in a particular case. Logic is a method; rationality is a mental attitude—a use of one’s mind that does not permit a single act of evasion, and therefore does not permit context-dropping. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 4 « Objectivity », p. 124 : « Out-of-context claims or proposals, like out-of-context quotations or concepts, are by their nature invalidated. Whenever one treats a conclusion as an atom unrelated to the rest of cognition, one thereby detaches the conclusion, along with the thought process involving it, from reality. If one drops context, one drops the means of distinguishing between truth and fantasy; anyone can then claim to prove anything, however absurd—just as, out of context, anyone can quote anybody to mean anything. »

[52:25] L’alliage fallacieux (package-deal)

• Note de bas de page dans « The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made », publié dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 30 : « “Package-dealing” is the fallacy of failing to discriminate crucial differences. It consists of treating together, as parts of a single conceptual whole or “package,” elements which differ essentially in nature, truth-status, importance or value. »
• BRANDEN Barbara, « Common Aberrations in Thinking » (1962), conférence dans la série Principles of Efficient Thinking (op. cit.) : « I have borrowed the term “package deal,” using it metaphorically, of course, to describe a very prevalent psycho-epistemological fallacy. In this psycho-epistemological sense, I mean by “package dealing” the mental act, the error, of treating as a single, integrated unit two or more issues which, in fact, are different and which require to be isolated, analyzed, and considered separately. It means: mistakenly treating as one issue, having only one significance or meaning, that which involves several different, perhaps even contradictory, aspects. »
• « The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made » (1973), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 34-35 : »A typical package-deal, used by professors of philosophy, runs as follows: to prove the assertion that there is no such thing as « necessity » in the universe, a professor declares that just as this country did not have to have fifty states, there could have been forty-eight or fifty-two—so the solar system did not have to have nine planets, there could have been seven or eleven. It is not sufficient, he declares, to prove that something is, one must also prove that it had to be—and since nothing had to be, nothing is certain and anything goes. »
• « For the New Intellectual » (1961) dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 35-36 : « [The Pragmatists] declared […] that that there is no such thing as a distinction between an external world and a consciousness (between the perceived and the perceiver), there is only an undifferentiated package-deal labeled “experience”… »

[52:59] La définition par l’inessentiel

• « The Cognitive Role of Concepts », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 71-72 : « Just as the requirements of cognition forbid the arbitrary subdivision of concepts, so they forbid the arbitrary integration of concepts into a wider concept by means of obliterating their essential differences—which is an error (or falsification) proceeding from definitions by non-essentials. (This is the method involved in the obliteration of valid concepts by means of “anti-concepts.”) For example, if one took the capacity to run as man’s essential characteristic and defined him as “a running animal,” the next step would be the attempt to eliminate “non-essential” distinctions and to form a single, higher-level concept out of “running entities,” such as a running man, a running river, a running stocking, a running movie, a running commentary, etc. (on some such grounds as the notion that entities have no epistemological priority over actions). The result would be cognitive stultification and epistemological disintegration. Cognitively, such an attempt would produce nothing but a bad hash of equivocations, shoddy metaphors and unacknowledged “stolen” concepts. »
• « “Extremism,” or the Art of Smearing » (1964), dans Capitalism: The Unknwon Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 17, p. 176 : « [I]f a man accepts a term with a definition by non-essentials, his mind will substitute for it the essential characteristic of the objects he is trying to designate. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 3 « Concept-Formation », p. 100 : « One schizophrenic in New York City’s Bellevue Hospital routinely equated sex, cigars, and Jesus Christ. He regarded all these existents, both in his thought and in his feelings about them, as interchangeable members of a single class, on the grounds that all had an attribute in common, “encirclement.” In sex, he explained, the woman is encircled by the man; cigars are encircled by tax bands; Jesus is encircled by a halo. This individual, in effect, was trying to form a new concept, “encirclist.” Such an attempt is a cognitive disaster, which can lead only to confusion, distortion, and falsehood. »

[53:30] Les anti-concepts

• « Credibility and Polarization » (1971), dans The Ayn Rand Letter, octobre 1971, vol. 1, n° 1, p. 1 : « An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate understanding. But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the approximate… »
• « “Extremism,” or the Art of Smearing » (1964), dans Capitalism: The Unknwon Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 17, p. 176 : « It consists of creating an artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term, designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concepts—a term which sounds like a concept, but stands for a “package-deal” of disparate, incongruous, contradictory elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context, a “package-deal” whose (approximately) defining characteristic is always a non-essential. This last is the essence of the trick. »
• « Definitions » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 49 : « There are such things as invalid concepts, i.e., words that represent attempts to integrate errors, contradictions or false propositions, such as concepts originating in mysticism—or words without specific definitions, without referents, which can mean anything to anyone, such as modern “anti-concepts.”’ Invalid concepts appear occasionally in men’s languages, but are usually—though not necessarily—short-lived, since they lead to cognitive dead-ends. An invalid concept invalidates every proposition or process of thought in which it is used as a cognitive assertion.) »

[54:50] La réécriture de la réalité

• « The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made« , dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 36-37 : « Unable to determine what they can or cannot change, some men attempt to “rewrite reality,” i.e., to alter the nature of the metaphysically given. Some dream of a universe in which man experiences nothing but happiness—no pain, no frustration, no illness—and wonder why they lose the desire to improve their life on earth. Some feel that they would be brave, honest, ambitious in a world where everyone automatically shared these virtues—but not in the world as it is. Some dread the thought of eventual death—and never undertake the task of living. »
• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 151-152 : « Do not rewrite reality. On what grounds did someone decide that choice contradicts identity? That is an arbitrary construct of determinism. I first encountered a similar issue in college. Some professor declared: “We must decide whether we’re spiritualists or materialists, because the universe cannot contain opposite elements. So either everything is spirit or everything is matter.” I was about sixteen, and thought: “Of course, I’m for matter.” That seemed the rational answer. It took me a couple of years before I asked the following question: “On what grounds did he decide that reality must be one or the other?” Then I discovered the principle of rewriting reality, and that was very helpful. You’d be surprised how many errors consist of rewriting reality. Kant is the archetype. He does it more, and more openly, than most philosophers. He decides (on a primitive, rationalistic basis, à la Heraclitus and Parmenides) what reality has to be, and if it doesn’t correspond to his demands, then reality is wrong—not his demands. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Reality », p. 26-27 : « The attempt to alter the nature of the metaphysically given is described by Ayn Rand as the fallacy of “rewriting reality.” Those who commit it regard metaphysical facts as non-absolute and, therefore, feel free to imagine an alternative to them. In effect, they regard the universe as though it were merely a first draft of reality, which anyone may decide at will to rewrite. A common example is provided by those who condemn life on earth because man is capable of failure, frustration, pain, and who yearn instead for a world in which man knows nothing but happiness. But if the possibility of failure exists, it necessarily exists (it is inherent in the fact that achieving a value depends on a specific course of action, and that man is neither omniscient nor omnipotent in regard to such action). Anyone who holds the full context—who keeps in mind the identity of all the relevant entities—would be unable even to imagine an alternative to the facts as they are; the contradictions involved in such a projection would obliterate it. The rewriters, however, do not keep identity in mind; they specialize in out-of-context pining for a « heaven » that is the antonym of the metaphysically given. »

[55:25] L’abstraction figée

• « Collectivized Ethics » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 81 : « [A] fallacy which may be termed “the fallacy of the frozen abstraction” […] consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs—in this case, substituting a specific ethics (altruism) for the wider abstraction of “ethics.” Thus, a man may reject the theory of altruism and assert that he has accepted a rational code—but, failing to integrate his ideas, he continues unthinkingly to approach ethical questions in terms established by altruism. »

[56:01] L’argument de l’intimidation

• « The Argument from Intimidation » (1964), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 19, p. 139 : « There is a certain type of argument which, in fact, is not an argument, but a means of forestalling debate and extorting an opponent’s agreement with one’s undiscussed notions. It is a method of bypassing logic by means of psychological pressure . . . [It] consists of threatening to impeach an opponent’s character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate. Example: “Only the immoral can fail to see that Candidate X’s argument is false.” […] The falsehood of his argument is asserted arbitrarily and offered as proof of his immorality. In today’s epistemological jungle, that second method is used more frequently than any other type of irrational argument. It should be classified as a logical fallacy and may be designated as “The Argument from Intimidation.” The essential characteristic of the Argument from Intimidation is its appeal to moral self-doubt and its reliance on the fear, guilt or ignorance of the victim. It is used in the form of an ultimatum demanding that the victim renounce a given idea without discussion, under threat of being considered morally unworthy. The pattern is always: “Only those who are evil (dishonest, heartless, insensitive, ignorant, etc.) can hold such an idea.” »

Rationalisme et empirisme

[56:45] Objectivisme contre rationalisme et empirisme

• « For the New Intellectual » (1961) dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 31 : « The form of that absurd concession was the philosophers’ ultimate division into two camps: those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)—and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists). To put it more simply: those who joined the Witch Doctor, by abandoning reality—and those who clung to reality, by abandoning their mind. »
• « Review of Randall’s Aristotle » (1960), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.) chap. 2, p. 6-7 : « Today, philosophy has sunk below the level of Aristotle versus Plato, down to the primitive gropings of Parmenides versus Heraclitus; whose disciples were unable to reconcile the concept of intellectual certainty with the phenomenon of change: the Eleatics, who claimed that change is illogical, that in any clash between mind and reality, reality is dispensable and, therefore, change is an illusion—versus the Heraclitean Sophists, who claimed that mind is dispensable, that knowledge is an illusion and nothing exists but change. Or: consciousness without existence versus existence without consciousness. Or: blind dogmatism versus cynical subjectivism. Or: Rationalism versus Empiricism. »
• Préface de The Ominous Parallels (New York: Stein and Day, 1982), p. viii : « The non-modern (and non-old-fashioned) aspect of Leonard Peikoff’s book is the breadth of his vision and the stunning scale of his philosophic integration. He does not share the concrete-bound, college-induced myopia of those alleged philosophers who study the various meanings of the word “but” (the contemporary empiricists)—nor does he share the foggy stumbling and the floating abstractions of their predecessors (the rationalists). »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Writing: Analyses of “Philosophy: Who Needs It” and a Sample Essay » (1980), dans Objective Communication (séminaire, 1980), Lesson 2, enregistrement YouTube [01:16:51] : « In philosophy, the term “rationalism” is used to designate a broad school contrasted with “empiricism.” These are two technical terms, standing for two schools of philosophy that have been at war with each other from Greece to the present time. Rationalists, roughly, are those philosophers who stress the role of reason or logic in the acquisition of knowledge, and they disparage or deny the senses. They include thinkers like Plato, Augustine, Descartes… Empiricists, on the other hand—people like John Locke, David Hume, and the modern pragmatists…—stress the role of experience, sensory evidence, while denying or minimizing logic. As pure philosophy, both of these schools lead to disaster, and Objectivism rejects both sides, both camps. »

[57:24] Le rationalisme

• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Writing: Analyses of “Philosophy: Who Needs It” and a Sample Essay » (1980), dans Objective Comunication (séminaire, 1980), Lesson 2, enregistrement YouTube [01:20:45] : « Miss Rand once invented this eloquent example: A rationalist type would come out with some premise such as, “Man has only two eyes; therefore, he should be able to see only two things, one with each eye.” The rationalist does not ask why; it sounds neat and symmetrical—two things, two eyes, it all fits. At this point, two schools of philosophy would arise. One would say, “We have to accept the conclusion. Men do see only two things; everything else, they do not actually see—it is all an illusion.” To that, the opposing school would reply, “Men do see countless things, not just two, but that is because of all the hidden eyes that they have.” If you then say to such a rationalist, “Look, it is not true; if you look at reality, you will see that men do, in fact, have only two eyes, and they do see many things,” he will find that irrelevant. Reality does not have any status in his thinking. He has decided that his conclusion about eyes is good, and his idea supersedes all facts. »
• « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 12, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:01:42] : « I would never say such a thing because, observe: this is rationalism. The idea of proving something out of context without reference to reality, simply proving, by syllogism that something exist or doesn’t exist. I never employed this method. »
• Lettre à Rose Wilder Lane, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « Letters to a philosopher », p. 526 : « Logic is the art of reasoning correctly about observed facts—but not of creating the facts. Logic cannot start in a vacuum. Logic presupposes something about which one reasons. »
• Voir aussi sur ce blog : Objectivisme et rationalisme pour plus de sources.

[59:16] Vérité-cohérence vs. vérité-correspondance

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1017 : « Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality »
• « Philosophical Detection » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 16 : « What is the meaning of the concept “truth”? Truth is the recognition of reality. (This is known as the correspondence theory of truth.) The same thing cannot be true and untrue at the same time and in the same respect. »
• « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 6, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:37:37] : « The coherence theory of truth claims that any claim which is coherent—that is: it does not contain a contradiction—is true. You don’t have to refer to reality; you merely have to present a consistent case, and if there aren’t any inner contradictions, that proves that your case is true. Now that’s pure rationalism; and it does posit a mystical absolute that sits somewhere in another dimension, and control this world. […] Is the coherence theory an instance of rewriting reality? Yes certainly. It simply tells you: “Go ahead and rewrite, and if you can somehow avoid a contradiction (which in fact you cannot) […], then your rewrite becomes reality.” »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chap. 5 « Reason », p. 165 : « The concept of “truth” identifies a type of relationship between a proposition and the facts of reality. “Truth,” in Ayn Rand’s definition, is “the recognition of reality.” In essence, this is the traditional correspondence theory of truth: there is a reality independent of man, and there are certain conceptual products, propositions, formulated by human consciousness. When one of these products corresponds to reality, when it constitutes a recognition of fact, then it is true. Conversely, when the mental content does not thus correspond, when it constitutes not a recognition of reality but a contradiction of it, then it is false. »

[59:47] L’empirisme

• « Kant versus Sullivan » (1970), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 9, p. 100 : « For the past several decades, the dominant fashion among academic philosophers was empiricism—a militant kind of empiricism. Its exponents dismissed philosophical problems by declaring that fundamental concepts—such as existence, entity, identity, reality—are meaningless; they declared that concepts are arbitrary social conventions and that only sense data, “unprocessed” by conceptualization, represent a valid or “scientific” form of knowledge… »
• « Rationalism and Empiricism » (1983), dans Understanding Objectivism, (New York: New American Library, 2012), Lecture 8, p.247 : « The empiricist might use ideas, but he always feels that ideas are suspect. They are somehow detached from reality. They are “academic,” sterile, theoretical, unreal. They are talk. Often, of course, this attitude is generated by sheer reaction to rationalism. […] The extreme examples of this in the history of philosophy would be the Greek Sophists, who simply denied abstractions outright, and David Hume, who denied everything except the empirical datum of the moment. Empiricists like empirical data, which means something you can point to, some perceptual concrete. They care less about how it’s related to some other concrete, because that involves concepts and connections and abstractions. But to point to some concrete and say, “Here now brown,” or whatever it happens to be (some of the more ambitious ones get to “Here now tomato”), that is for them intellectually satisfying, that’s real, that’s convincing, that’s clear. »
• SALMIERI Gregory, « The Objectivist Epistemology« , dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Part 4, chap. 12, p. 277 : « The first thinkers to identify themselves as “empiricists” were a school of Hellenistic doctors who thought that it was impossible to come to know the fundamental causes of disease and health, so doctors should restrict themselves to describing and predicting patterns of symptoms and recommending treatments on the basis of such predictions. Medicine, as these empiricists practiced it, was not scientific in Aristotle’s sense; it was limited to the sort of knowledge he called “experience”—empeiria, in Greek. At least some of the these empiricists thought that scientific knowledge was impossible in all fields, because (siding with Plato over Aristotle) they believed that in order to know the principles required for scientific knowledge, human beings would need an intellectual faculty independent of the senses, and (siding with Aristotle over Plato) they denied that human beings have any such faculty. In the eighteenth century, David Hume developed a version of this same empiricist position. »

[01:01:05] La mentalité anti-conceptuelle

• « The Missing Link » (1973) : « It is a mentality which decided, at a certain point of development, that it knows enough and does not care to look further. What does it accept as “enough”? The immediately given, directly perceivable concretes of its background—“the empiric element in experience.”
  To grasp and deal with such concretes, a human being needs a certain degree of conceptual development, a process which the brain of an animal cannot perform. But after the initial feat of learning to speak, a child can counterfeit this process, by memorization and imitation. The anti-conceptual mentality stops on this level of development—on the first levels of abstractions, which identify perceptual material consisting predominantly of physical objects—and does not choose to take the next, crucial, fully volitional step: the higher levels of abstraction from abstractions, which cannot be learned by imitation. »
• « Consciousness and Identity » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 76 : « The result is a mentality that treats the first-level abstractions, the concepts of physical existents, as if they were percepts, and is unable to rise much further, unable to integrate new knowledge or to identify its own experience—a mentality that has not discovered the process of conceptualization in conscious terms, has not learned to adopt it as an active, continuous, self-initiated policy, and is left arrested on a concrete-bound level, dealing only with the given, with the concerns of the immediate moment, day or year, anxiously sensing an abyss of the unknowable on all sides. »
• « The Anatomy of Compromise » (1967), dans Capitalism: The Unknwon Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 144 : « A major symptom of a man’s—or a culture’s—intellectual and moral disintegration is the shrinking of vision and goals to the concrete-bound range of the immediate moment. This means: the progressive disappearance of abstractions from a man’s mental processes or from a society’s concerns. The manifestation of a disintegrating consciousness is the inability to think and act in terms of principles. »
• « Notes: 1955-1977 », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 5 « Final Years », chap. 15, section « Memory-Storing Epistemology », p. 674 : « The “emotional” epistemology of the “perceptual” level [mentality] works as follows: instead of storing conceptual conclusions and evaluations in his subconscious, a man stores concrete memories plus an emotional estimate. »

[01:01:42] Rationalisme/empirisme et le problème des universaux

• « Rationalism and Empiricism » (1983), dans Understanding Objectivism, (New York: New American Library, 2012), Lecture 8, p. 245 : « What is its essential philosophic base, the metaphysics and epistemology that it rests on? In a single word, intrinsicism. The rationalist’s idea of a realm of dissociated concepts that has no connection to sensory observation would be possible only on some kind of Platonic idea—that is, that there’s a world of real universals, real Platonic forms or essences, that are out there intrinsically in reality quite apart from our minds and concretes, and which act on us and yield the awareness of conceptual information. If concepts were nothing but our abstractions from sensory data, you could never possibly have the idea of a world of separate concepts. So the idea of ideas above reality implies that there are some kind of ideas intrinsic in reality that act on us. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « The New Breach Between the Mind and Reality » (1972), dans Founders of Western Philosophy (op. cit.), Lecture 9 : « [A]ll nominalists are empiricists and go only by the basis of the sensory evidence… »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « … and the Attempt Collapses » (1972), dans ibid., Lecture 11 : « Hume takes a direction that we saw in Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley, and which I’m now going to emphasize in Hume. Hume declares that as an empiricist, one must be a nominalist. And Hume is an arch nominalist, nominalism being the rebellion against universals, either of the Platonic or the Aristotelian kind. A rebellion allegedly in the name of sense experience, empiricism, science. »

[01:02:30] Ce qu’est l’objectivité

• « The Foundations of Morality », interview pour WKCR reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.), Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 19, p. 141 : « “Objective” means that which corresponds to reality in man’s mind. It means the human grasp of that which exists outside his consciousness, in the objective world. The same knowledge is available to all of us. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chap. 4 « Objectivity », p. 117 : « For a volitional, conceptual consciousness, a method of knowing reality is both necessary and possible. To define such a method, Ayn Rand holds, is the purpose of epistemology. The method must reflect two factors: the facts of external reality and the nature of man’s consciousness. It must reflect the first, because consciousness is not a self-contained entity; it is the faculty of perceiving that which exists. The method must reflect the second factor, because consciousness has identity; the mind is not blank receptivity; it is a certain kind of integrating mechanism, and it must act accordingly. Thus we reach Ayn Rand’s view of objectivity, which is a derivative of her theory of concepts. Here, in my own words, is her definition. To be “objective” in one’s conceptual activities is volitionally to adhere to reality by following certain rules of method, a method based on facts and appropriate to man’s form of cognition. »
• « Consciousness and Identity » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 82 : « Objectivity begins with the realization that man (including his every attribute and faculty, including his consciousness) is an entity of a specific nature who must act accordingly; that there is no escape from the law of identity, neither in the universe with which he deals nor in the working of his own consciousness, and if he is to acquire knowledge of the first, he must discover the proper method of using the second; that there is no room for the arbitrary in any activity of man, least of all in his method of cognition—and just as he has learned to be guided by objective criteria in making his physical tools, so he must be guided by objective criteria in forming his tools of cognition: his concepts. »

[01:02:48] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur l’objectivité

• « Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics? » (1965), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 18 : « Objectivity is both a metaphysical and an epistemological concept. It pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Metaphysically, it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver’s consciousness. Epistemologically, it is the recognition of the fact that a perceiver’s (man’s) consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain rules (logic). »