Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (30 page)

Interestingly, this was precisely the charge leveled against subjectivism by Rand’s teacher. For Lossky, the fact that a person was conscious suggested three interacting moments: the self, the object (or content of the mind), and the relation of “having” between the self and the content. The self is conscious, and the content is that which the self is conscious of.
Kant
perpetuated the view “that the contents of consciousness must necessarily be mental states of the individual,” rather than something derived from objective reality. For Lossky, a fact is
ontologically
real. When it is grasped by the knowing subject as part of the content of judgment, it is logically necessary.
¹¹

For Rand, as for
Lossky
,
Kant
’s subjectivist approach was to be repudiated. Both Rand and Lossky would have agreed that Kant’s system invalidated the objectivity of human
perception
. Both Rand and Lossky rejected such distinctions as analytic and synthetic, logical and experiential, necessary and contingent,
a priori
and a posteriori.
¹²
But Rand went beyond the intrinsicist critique of her teacher. For Lossky, the objective content of judgment is not a fully processed, human form of perceived reality, but reality itself.
Ontology
and
logic
nearly collapse. Rand argues, by contrast, that Kant’s distinction between things-in-themselves and things-as-they-are-perceived perpetuates a gulf between reality and consciousness. Whereas Lossky as an intrinsicist believed that we grasp “things-in-themselves,” Kant maintained, in Rand’s view, that we only grasp things as they appear to our consciousness, which imposes a structure on reality. Rand rejected both alternatives. For Rand, there is nothing in the world that can be discussed as “reality in itself,” if by such a designation is meant that we can somehow grasp reality external to a human perspective. Similarly, even if there were an
omniscient
being, that being would still perceive reality by divine methods of perception from which he, she, or it could not escape.

Rand maintained that the subject’s means of perception are not a disqualifying element in the grasp of the object (“Appendix,” 193–94). The means of perception and the process of cognition do not invalidate or subjectify the reality that is perceived. Rand argued that the Kantian credo “is a revolt, not only against being conscious, but against being alive,” since every aspect of life involves
processing.
There is no such thing as “unprocessed knowledge,” for this would imply that people could acquire information about the real world without cognitive means. For Rand, every living organism must process the physical and mental elements that sustain it. Our modes of breathing, eating, and knowing are the human means of processing and appropriating elements in objective reality. Rand states:

No one would argue (at least, not yet) that since man’s body has to
process
the food he eats, no objective rules of proper
nutrition
can ever be discovered—that “true nutrition” has to consist of absorbing some ineffable substance without the participation of a digestive system, but since man is incapable of “true feeding,” nutrition is a subjective matter open to his whim, and it is merely a social convention that forbids him to eat poisonous mushrooms. (
Introduction
, 81–82)

Hence, just as it is illegitimate to subjectify the digestive process, it is equally incorrect to view perception and cognition as subjective.

Rand explained that in the history of philosophy, the dominance of one polar position ultimately created conditions for the resurgence of its alleged opposite. But
intrinsicism
and
subjectivism
,
mysticism
and
skepticism
, differ only “in the form of their inner
contradiction
.”
¹³
The intrinsicist subverts the human mode of awareness in an effort to preserve the
objectivity
of the mind’s contents; the subjectivist denies the objectivity of the mind’s contents in an effort to preserve the human mode of awareness. Neither school grasps the
identity
of human
consciousness
or the
objective
nature of concept formation. Each school totalizes a different polar principle while suppressing its opposite. Each school is the mirror image of its adversary. Rand explains:

Philosophically, the mystic is usually an exponent of the
intrinsic
(revealed) school of
epistemology
; the skeptic is usually an advocate of epistemological
subjectivism.
But, psychologically, the mystic is a subjectivist who uses intrinsicism as a means to claim the primacy of
his
consciousness over that of others. The skeptic is a disillusioned intrinsicist who, having failed to find automatic supernatural guidance, seeks a substitute in the collective subjectivism of others. (
Introduction
, 79)

Rand’s critique of intrinsicism and subjectivism illustrates a highly
dialectical
exposition, a style common to such thinkers as Aristotle, Marx, and many Russian philosophers, including Solovyov and Lossky. Rand conceptualized not one, but
two,
false alternatives
that share a common error. She viewed these antinomies as embodying inner contradictions that must be
transcended
simultaneously. She recognized an interpenetration between intrinsicism and subjectivism in that each duplicates the psycho-philosophical tendencies of the other. Each school of thought, in its partiality and one-sidedness, perpetuates a distorted view of human consciousness. In both cases, Rand argued, the identity of the mind has not been fully understood or appreciated.

It is not quite accurate to say that Rand actually
constructed
her resolution out of the debris of these false alternatives. To be sure, Rand affirmed and repudiated half of each tradition, preserving only those aspects essential to a genuinely “objective” alternative. But her “Objectivist” resolution is not merely an amalgam of its predecessors; rather, it seeks to transcend their inherent limitations. For Rand, genuine objectivity cannot be validated without grasping that every human attribute and faculty, including mind and body, is subject to the law of identity. If people are to acquire knowledge of the world, they must discover proper
human
methods of cognition.
As she put it: “Just as man’s physical
existence
was liberated when he grasped the principle that ‘nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed,’ so his
consciousness
will be liberated when he grasps that
nature, to be apprehended, must be obeyed
—that the rules of cognition must be derived from the nature of existence and the nature, the identity of his cognitive faculty” (ibid.).

PERCEPTION

Rand considered consciousness axiomatic. But she understood the term “consciousness” in several different, though interrelated, ways. Consciousness is not only a
faculty
of
awareness
, the faculty of perceiving that which exists. Consciousness is also a
state
of awareness. It is a vital organ or attribute of specific living entities. Consciousness is a
process
of awareness marked by two essential aspects:
differentiation
and
integration
(
Introduction
, 5). The human form of consciousness is a repository of multiple constituents, all of which are inseparably linked:
perception
, volition, focus, reason,
abstraction
, and
conception
. Moreover, for Rand, the mind
is
the ego, the self, the I.
¹⁴

Hence, though Rand characterizes consciousness as metaphysically passive—that is, as nonconstitutive in the perception of reality—she views the mind as epistemologically active. Consciousness involves three distinct and interactive levels of awareness:
sensation
, perception, and conception. Each of these levels
is
a relation between consciousness and existence. There is no such thing as a disembodied mind. Every aspect and process of consciousness has a physical, material component.
¹⁵
Rand continues in the grand tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas; she argues that consciousness operates under conditions of materiality and sensuous corporeality.
¹⁶

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

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

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

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

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