Reason

Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses. In Objectivism it is man's only means of knowledge, his basic means of survival, and the faculty whose exercise is volitional, which is what makes morality necessary for him.

“Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses.”
   ~ Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics", The Virtue of Selfishness

Identification and integration

The definition names two operations, and both matter.

Identification is grasping what something is: answering the question "what is it?" about the material the senses deliver. It rests on the law of identity, and it is why logic, defined by Rand as the art of non-contradictory identification, is reason's method.

Integration is combining what is identified into a whole without contradiction. Concepts integrate existents into units; propositions integrate concepts; a body of knowledge integrates propositions into a hierarchy in which later knowledge rests on earlier. An idea held in isolation from the rest of one's knowledge is a floating abstraction, however true it may happen to be.

Reason as volitional

Perception happens automatically. Conceptual thought does not: it requires an effort that can be withheld. This is the choice to focus, and it is the reason reason can fail, and the reason objectivity is an achievement rather than a given.

It is also why man needs ethics. An animal's means of survival operates automatically; man's does not, so he requires a code telling him how to use it. See Value and Rationality, the virtue of accepting reason as one's only guide.

Reason as the means of survival

Man has no claws, no fur and no instincts that tell him what to eat or how to build. He survives by grasping the nature of things and reshaping his environment accordingly, from agriculture to antibiotics. Rand's political conclusions follow from this fact rather than from a separate premise:

• A mind cannot be forced to think. Coercion can compel a body to move, but not a person to understand.
• Therefore the requirement of human life in society is the absence of initiated force. See Initiation of force and Rights.

This is the thread connecting Objectivist epistemology to its politics: capitalism is defended as the system that leaves minds free.

The rejected alternatives

• Mysticism claims a source of knowledge apart from sensory evidence and reason: revelation, faith, intuition. Objectivism holds that a claim with no evidence is not false but arbitrary, not a candidate for belief at all.
• Skepticism concludes from the fact that man's knowledge has a specific means and a context that it is therefore not knowledge. This assumes that awareness with an identity is not real awareness, the same premise Objectivism rejects in intrinsicism.
• The reason-emotion dichotomy treats reason and feeling as opposed masters. Objectivism holds that emotions are automatic responses to one's values and appraisals, so they are consequences of thinking rather than a rival faculty. They are data about oneself, not evidence about the world.

Common misunderstandings

• That reason means being cold or unemotional. It means one's convictions are held on evidence. Rand held that a person whose values are rational is one whose emotions are in harmony with his judgment rather than at war with it.
• That reason is limited to deduction or to formal logic. It includes concept formation, induction and the reduction of abstractions to perceptual evidence. Logic is its method, not its whole content.
• That "reason as an absolute" makes certainty impossible or dogmatic. The claim is about method, not about any particular conclusion. Knowledge is contextual and open to extension, and holding it that way is what reason requires. See Certainty and Context.

See also

• Epistemology · Logic · Concept formation · Objectivity
• Volition · Consciousness · Senses · Emotions
• Rationality · Mysticism · Skepticism · Arbitrary
• Reason-Emotion Dichotomy · Faith

Discussion

• How does Objectivism disprove skepticism?
• A Bible passage which declares the mind evil
• "The only thing I know is that I don't know anything"

References

• Rand, Ayn. "The Objectivist Ethics", The Virtue of Selfishness. New American Library, 1964.
• Rand, Ayn. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The Objectivist, 1967.
• Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapters 4 and 5.

External links

• Reason at the Ayn Rand Lexicon