Perception

Perception is the automatic integration of sensations into an awareness of entities. In Objectivism it is the level of consciousness at which man directly grasps the things around him, and it is the base of all his knowledge: every valid concept must ultimately be reducible to the perceptual evidence it was formed from.

The three levels of awareness

Rand distinguished:

• Sensation — an isolated stimulus, not retained, and not experienced as such by an adult human.
• Perception — sensations automatically integrated into awareness of an entity. A person does not see patches of colour and infer a table; he sees a table.
• The conceptual level — volitional, specific to man, and the level at which concept formation, error and morality all become possible.

The integration at the perceptual level is performed by the nervous system without any choice on the perceiver's part. This is why perception cannot be mistaken, and why error is a conceptual phenomenon.

The validity of the senses

Objectivism holds that the senses are valid, and treats the claim as axiomatic rather than as something to be proved: any argument against the senses must use evidence that ultimately came from them.

The usual objections are held to rest on a confusion about what validity means. A stick in water looks bent. The senses are reporting accurately on what is actually there, which includes the water and the way light behaves in it. The perceptual apparatus does not tell us falsehoods; it gives us reality in the form determined by our means of awareness. That form is not a distortion, because there is no alternative form to compare it against. See Objectivity and Identity.

Illusions are therefore evidence that the senses work as they do, and the mistake, when there is one, lies in the conceptual judgment about what is being perceived.

Perception and concepts

Concepts are not free-floating. Every legitimate abstraction, however far removed, was formed from earlier abstractions that trace back to entities perceived. Reduction is the process of tracing that chain back down, and an abstraction that cannot be reduced is a floating abstraction: a word being used without a grasp of what it refers to.

This gives Objectivist epistemology its hierarchical structure, and gives reason its starting point.

See also

• Senses · Consciousness · Knowledge
• Concept formation · Concept · Unit
• Objectivity · Reason · Hierarchy
• Floating Abstraction · Skepticism · Realism

Discussion

• Is direct realism tenable?
• Human vs animal consciousness

References

• Rand, Ayn. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The Objectivist, 1967.
• Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 2.

External links

• Perception at the Ayn Rand Lexicon