Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (31 page)

Rand recognized that a scientific examination of
perception
can
help to distinguish between those aspects which are generated by our particular sense modalities and those which are products of the object itself. But in keeping with her injunction against hypothetical (and “cosmological”)
speculation, Rand maintained that the ultimate relationship of form and object is a purely scientific question with no philosophical significance (Peikoff 1991b, 47–48).

It is for this reason, for instance, that Rand refused to accept any distinction between primary and secondary perceptual qualities. Traditional philosophy defines primary characteristics as those which are
intrinsic
to the object. Secondary characteristics are those which are
intrinsic
to the subject’s perception of the object. Rand maintained, however, that to distinguish between these two categories, one would need to identify the irreducibility or primacy of a given physical attribute. This is a scientific question which has yet to be fully resolved (464 n. 3). It is illegitimate, in Rand’s view, to arbitrarily choose a primary characteristic such as extension, since
science
may yet discover that more basic causes are manifested in the form of extension as perceived by human sensory organs (Peikoff 1972T, lecture 12). Rand maintained that every attribute we perceive, including color and length, is perceived by some means. Even taste involves an interaction between certain chemical elements in the object and the nerve endings of the tongue (“Appendix,” 279–80). Those who attempt to identify—once and for all—the primary and secondary qualities of perception are engaging in what Kelley (1986) calls the “Cartesian quest for an infallible type of knowledge,” a form of perception that is somehow free from the conditions and limitations of the sensory apparatus (168).

None of these Randian arguments should suggest that human perception takes place in a vacuum. As people grow to maturity, they begin to apply their
conceptual
knowledge to the act of perception. Perception itself is guided by our
conscious
purposes, cognitive history, particular interests, and psychological factors (147). Within the broader social context, Kelley explains, even symbolic objects “have evolved culturally to serve as perceptible bearers of meaning” (254). Yet any differences in perceptual (and conceptual) classifications across cultures do not invalidate the objectivity of the cognitive process. For instance, Kelley observes that although the basic terms of “color” may vary across cultures, the focal instances are not arbitrary, and can be translated from one language into another. Different cultural partitions are no more a proof of subjectivity than are the use of different languages.
²²

VOLITION AND
FOCUS

Having analyzed the first and second levels of awareness, Rand knew that she had to investigate more deeply the third level of awareness distinctive to
human cognition. Both animals and human beings are capable of experiencing
sensations
and perceptions. Human beings however, exhibit
volitional
, self-conscious, and conceptual awareness.
²³
Rand characterized volition as another philosophic axiom. Volition is the choice “to think or not to think,” and it is a causal primary in cognition.
²⁴
Such a choice has existential,
epistemological
, and ethical significance. But “to think or not to think” is Rand’s poetic expression for an even broader cognitive choice: whether or not to apply one’s ability to
focus
.

Focusing is the most fundamental choice underlying and conditioning every other aspect of
consciousness
. It is more fundamental than the ability to choose among competing ideas or alternative courses of action. It is a constituent relation of
cognition
primarily. One cannot think, act, or desire without having volitionally “set” the mind into focal awareness in a general way.
²⁵

The act of focusing is manifested in a variety of cognitive activities.
²⁶
There is a
continuum of awareness
such that the mind can move from near unconsciousness to peripheral awareness to focused awareness, with no inherent barriers between states. Focus is much broader than the processes of deduction and induction. It can include meditation, relaxation, and even creative daydreaming.
²⁷
The most advanced categories of focal awareness will involve supreme clarity of mental content, a highly abstract level of cognitive activity, and the recognition of
context
. In all cases, the mind must initiate and sustain this process volitionally.
²⁸
In the Objectivist view, no antecedent, deterministic factors can explain why people choose or do not choose to focus.
²⁹
Rand recognized, however, that volitional focusing is automatized through habitual methods of thinking such that it would take a special effort for people to
un
focus the mind.
³⁰

Rand’s emphasis on the primary choice “to focus” does not imply that she was oblivious to the conditions, both existential and social, that can assist or block the acquisition and maturation of cognitive skills. These conditions form the broad context within which focal choices are made. This context is necessary but not sufficient to prompt human action.
³¹
It does not strictly determine the ability of an individual to raise the level of his own focal awareness. Nor does the context invalidate the methods of cognition that must be used by all individuals in their attempts to gain knowledge of reality. But an individual’s interests, values, knowledge, and inborn capacities cannot be ignored in judging the efficacy of his focal choices (Peikoff 1991b, 65–66).

For instance, certain inborn physical and cognitive differences make it more difficult—or easier—for some individuals to develop their cognitive skills. Children who are born blind and have their vision restored in later
years at first must expend effort to raise their level of visual
awareness
. Previously, their powers of
perception
were developed through alternative
sense
modalities (such as touch). Once their vision is restored, they initially experience visual sensations but cannot see objects.
³²
However, the presence of innate disabilities or innate intelligence does not alter the fact that there are specific, objective means of cognition that each person must follow in the quest for knowledge. It is for this
reason
that Rand saw such innate differences as
epistemologically
insignificant.

Nevertheless, certain
social
practices influence the development of cognitive skills. These practices have epistemological significance because they can facilitate or obstruct a child’s cognitive development. This is not an argument for social determinism; it is Rand’s way of tracing the interconnections between
epistemology
and cultural institutions, that is, between the development of cognition and the social practices that can accelerate—or destroy—it.
³³

REASON

One of the most striking aspects of Rand’s conception of human
consciousness
is her refusal to fragment the constituent relations that compose it. Her hostility toward
dualism
is manifested especially in her antipathy toward a bifurcated, fractured view of consciousness. Consciousness, as such, includes moments of perception,
volition
,
focus
, reason, abstraction, and conception. For Rand, these are not separate faculties. Each is both a component part of the others and a distinct aspect of a single, integrated totality.
³⁴
In fact, there are times when Rand’s definition of a single constituent of consciousness incorporates all of the other identified moments.

But Rand sometimes identified consciousness with a single attribute. In her early journal entries, for instance, she argued that “all consciousness is reason” and “all reason is
logic
,” creating a virtual
identity
between reason, logic, and consciousness.
³⁵
These one-dimensional identities were formulated as a reaction against
religion
—which, in Rand’s view, fractured the relationship between consciousness and logic. She saw religion (i.e., faith) as a “disease,” a “departure” from reason, logic, and consciousness that necessarily undermined an individual’s cognitive contact with the world.
³⁶

As Rand grew to intellectual maturity, her conception of
reason
transcended this one-sided emphasis on logic. Ultimately she embraced what
Barry
(1987) has described as “a particularly expansive concept of ‘reason’” (106). In
Atlas Shrugged
, Rand defined reason as the faculty of awareness, that is, “the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material
provided by [the]
senses
” (1016). In this definition, Rand incorporated the moments of perception, identification, and
integration
, preserving the hierarchical structure of cognition. But she refused to identify reason as a purely logical faculty. Nor is reason a faculty of perception. It is all of these things and more. Though Rand abstracted these aspects in order to examine their distinctiveness, she refused to reify them into separate faculties (Peikoff 1990–91T, lecture 10). For Rand, reason is an integrative faculty, combining analysis with synthesis and applying logic to experience. These characteristics are distinctions within an organic unity. Reason is at once a logical and a practical capacity. It enables the
differentiation
and integration of experiential data. It guides
action
and makes it possible to evaluate the consequences of action.

Hence it is particularly disconcerting to read the claims of critics such as Hazel
Barnes
and
Randall Dipert
, who argue that Rand’s view of reason is one-dimensional. In Barnes’s illuminating study,
Existentialist Ethics
, she includes a provocative comparison of the works of Rand and
Sartre
. According to Barnes, Rand embraced an Aristotelian view of human beings as rational animals that is considerably narrower than Sartre’s view of human nature. For Sartre, reason is only one part of human being, not the totality, and self-awareness is what distinguishes humans from all other living organisms. Barnes criticizes Rand for equating such self-consciousness with the rational faculty. In Barnes’s view, Rand totalized reason while suppressing the other aspects of consciousness. Barnes suggests that Rand’s view of reason is strictly limited to its purely logical functions.
³⁷

By contrast, Dipert argues that whereas Marx embraced an expansive, practical conception of reason, Rand endorsed a view of the
mind
as entirely passive.
³⁸
For Marx, as for Aristotle, reason includes both theoretical and practical abilities, the capacity to contemplate, plan, deliberate, intend, and act. However, Rand does not deny any of these constituent aspects of the rational faculty. Dipert erroneously collapses Rand’s understanding of the moment of perception into her view of reason. He confuses Rand’s concept of reason, which necessarily involves cognitive
activity
, with her view of the metaphysical passivity of perceptual processes.

For Rand,
reason
embodies
epistemological
and practical activity. This is a reflection of the seamless unity of
mind and body
. Since reason is the faculty for knowing reality, and since it functions through the corporeality of the senses, it must also be the faculty that guides
action
. For Rand, this
relationship
between reason and action was demonstrated unequivocally by the
Industrial Revolution
(Peikoff 1991b, 195). Prior to the emergence of
capitalism
, the connection between knowledge and praxis was not fully appreciated. It was only with the application of reason to the production of
material goods that human beings began to recognize the inseparable link between the
conceptual
faculty and survival.
³⁹

Rand argued that the faculty of reason guides and directs human
consciousness
, in a process she once dubbed
“front-seat driving.”
Reason is an engine of active, purposeful thinking. As an integrative faculty, it transcends the purely passive, associational methods of
perception
, even as it incorporates perception as one of its distinct moments.
⁴⁰

Rand’s view of the relationship between reason and action is more specifically a
conception
of the link between an
individual’s
reason and actions. The faculty of reason is not a faculty of “pure
rationality
” disconnected from the individual who possesses it. Rand tied her
epistemological
perspective to her emphasis on the
ontological
priority of individuals. For Rand, the mind “is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain.… The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone.… No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred” (F
ountainhead
, 680).

Rand recognized that knowledge itself is a product of conceptual thought. It can be transmitted socially and intergenerationally. But the rational faculty itself is not transferable. The individual can perform cognitive functions only in the isolation of his own mind, “rationally grasping every step in the process” as a means of comprehending the whole. People may share
what
they have learned, but they cannot share
how
—the actual means by which—they think. People may be able to articulate the methods of cognition, but they cannot share the epistemic processes, which are performed individually.
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