Principle
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A principle is "a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend." Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by a means of principles that one can set one's long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and achieve it.
["The Anatomy of Compromise", CUI, p144]
Some principles of Objectivism:
- Facts are not "malleable."
- No alternative to a fact of reality is possible or imaginable.
- Consciousness has identity.
- The faculty of reason is the faculty of volition.
- The unit must be appropriate to the attribute being measured.
- The definitional principle is: wherever possible, an essential characteristic must be a fundamental.
- Thinking, to be valid, must adhere to reality.
- "Existence is Identity; Consciousness is Identification."
- The law of contradiction.
- Human knowledge on every level is relational.
- Knowledge follows a necessary order.
- The arbitrary cannot be cognitively processed.
- Life as the standard of value.