Context

Context is the sum of cognitive elements conditioning the acquisition, validity or application of an item of knowledge. Objectivism holds that no concept, proposition or proof stands alone: each is reached within a body of prior knowledge, and dropping that body while retaining the conclusion is one of the commonest ways human thinking goes wrong.

“The sum of cognitive elements conditioning the acquisition, validity or application of any item of human knowledge.”
   ~ Leonard Peikoff, quoted at the Ayn Rand Lexicon

Knowledge is not a heap of separate items

A statement is not a self-contained package whose meaning can be read off its words. Consider the arithmetic that everyone treats as beyond argument:

2 + 2 = 4

In base three the sum is written 11; in base four it is 10. The proposition as usually understood assumes base ten, and that assumption is part of what makes it true rather than an optional extra someone might mention. It is not usually stated because it is not usually in question.

The point generalises. Every claim carries conditions it was formed under: the meanings of its terms, the range of cases surveyed, the evidence available, the purpose the classification serves. These are not qualifications weakening the claim. They are what the claim is. See Concept formation and Truth.

This is also why knowledge has a hierarchy. Some items cannot be reached until others are in place, and the ones underneath remain part of the context of the ones above whether or not anyone is thinking about them. See Fundamental.

Context-dropping

The corresponding error is context-dropping: retaining a conclusion while discarding the conditions that established it, or applying a principle outside the range it was formed within.

Its forms include:

• Applying a valid principle to a case it does not cover. A rule about ordinary trade applied unchanged to a man under duress.
• Treating a definition as if it were the whole of a concept. A definition names essentials within a context of knowledge; the concept subsumes everything its referents are.
• The stolen concept, its most serious form: using a concept while denying something it depends on. An argument against reason must be reasoned; a denial that anything can be known claims to know that.
• Demanding evidence out of order. Asking for proof of an axiom is a context error, since proof is a process that presupposes the axiom being questioned. See Axioms and Proof.

Rand's practical rule follows from this: when a contradiction appears, check the premises, because one of them is being carried outside the conditions that made it true.

Contextual certainty

The most consequential application is to certainty and induction.

The skeptic's demand is that a conclusion be secured against anything anyone might ever learn. That is a demand for omniscience, and no finite mind can meet it, which is why the demand always ends in the conclusion that nothing is known. Objectivism rejects the demand rather than the knowledge.

A conclusion proved within the full context of the evidence available is knowledge. Later discovery can extend it, delimit its range, or place it inside a wider framework, and none of that makes the original judgment arbitrary or false within its own context. Newtonian mechanics did not become wrong; it acquired a boundary. See Certainty and Skepticism.

The requirement this imposes is real and is not a loophole: the context must be the full context available. A conclusion held by ignoring evidence one has, or could readily get, is not contextually certain. It is evasion. See Volition and Objectivity.

Common misunderstandings

• That contextualism is relativism. A context is a body of evidence, which is a fact about the situation rather than a preference of the person judging. Two people with the same evidence who reach opposite conclusions are not both right.
• That every statement is arbitrary until its context is stated. It is not. Most contexts are obvious and shared, which is why nobody prefaces arithmetic with a note about base ten. The arbitrary is a claim advanced with no evidence at all, which is a different matter entirely.
• That "in context" is a way of rescuing a failed claim. Appealing to context legitimately means identifying the conditions the claim was proved under. It is not a licence to retrofit conditions after a counterexample appears.
• That contextual knowledge means provisional knowledge. Provisional would mean held pending confirmation. Contextual means established, with a known scope. The difference is between a conclusion that might be withdrawn and one that might be extended.

See also

• Certainty · Truth · Knowledge · Proof · Arbitrary
• Hierarchy · Fundamental · Rule of Fundamentality · Axioms
• Concept formation · Induction · Logic · Objectivity
• Fallacy of the stolen concept · Floating Abstraction · Skepticism

Discussion

• "The only thing I know is that I don't know anything"
• Aristotle's wheel paradox
• Objectivist epistemology and metaphysics

References

• Rand, Ayn. "Definitions", Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The Objectivist, 1967.
• Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapters 4 and 5.

External links

• Context at the Ayn Rand Lexicon