Knowledge

Knowledge is a mental grasp of a fact of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation. Objectivism holds that it is an achievement of a particular consciousness by a particular method, which is why the question of how something is known is inseparable from whether it is known at all.

“"Knowledge" is... a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation.”
   ~ Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

What the definition rules out

Each clause of the definition is doing work against a standing alternative.

• "A mental grasp" — knowledge is held by a mind. It is not a property of books, databases or institutions except derivatively, as a record from which a mind can recover it.
• "Of a fact of reality" — the content is something that is so. A coherent, internally consistent body of belief about nothing is not knowledge. See Truth and Fact.
• "Reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation" — the method is specified, and only two routes are named. Everything else on offer historically — revelation, intuition, instinct, innate ideas, authority — is excluded. See Mysticism and Faith.

The second route is what makes conceptual knowledge possible, and it is not a weaker version of the first. A conclusion reached by proof from observation is knowledge in the same sense as what one sees. See Reason and Logic.

Knowledge is contextual and hierarchical

Two properties follow from the fact that knowledge is acquired rather than given.

It is contextual. Every item is reached within a body of prior knowledge, and it is validated against the full evidence available, not against everything that could ever be discovered. This is what allows a finite mind to know anything with certainty rather than holding all conclusions hostage to the merely conceivable.

It is hierarchical. Items depend on other items in a definite order, running down to first-level concepts and to perception. An idea whose place in that order cannot be traced is not knowledge but a floating abstraction — a word retained without its content.

Objectivism therefore treats the process as inseparable from the product. Two people can hold the same true proposition, one having reduced it and one having absorbed it from someone confident, and only the first knows it.

Its base and its instrument

The base is perception. The senses do not interpret and cannot err; they report what is there in the form appropriate to the organs receiving it. Error enters at the conceptual level, where identification is volitional. See Senses and Objectivity.

The instrument is concepts, which is what makes the quantity of knowledge available to a man unlimited despite the small number of items he can hold at once. See Unit-economy and Crow-epistemology.

Because the conceptual level is volitional, knowledge is not automatic and not guaranteed. A mind can drift, evade, or accept unexamined. This is the point at which epistemology connects to ethics: rationality is a virtue precisely because knowing is something a person has to choose to do. See Volition.

Common misunderstandings

• That fallibility rules out knowledge. Men make errors, which is why method matters. A faculty that can be misused is not thereby useless — and the claim that human knowledge is unreliable would itself have to be knowledge. See Skepticism and Fallacy of the stolen concept.
• That knowledge requires justification all the way down without end. The chain terminates in the self-evident: the axioms and the perceptual level. Neither is proved, and neither needs to be, because proof is what they make possible.
• That "knowledge is contextual" makes it relative. A context is a body of evidence, which is a fact about the situation and not a preference of the knower.
• That knowledge means only what has been proved conclusively. Objectivism recognises degrees — possible, probable, certain — and treats the arbitrary as outside the scale entirely rather than at its bottom. See Arbitrary.

See also

• Truth · Fact · Certainty · Context · Proof · Arbitrary
• Perception · Senses · Reason · Logic · Induction
• Concept · Concept formation · Hierarchy · Unit-economy · Crow-epistemology
• Objectivity · Volition · Consciousness · Epistemology
• Skepticism · Mysticism · Faith · Floating Abstraction

Discussion

• Objectivist epistemology and metaphysics
• "The only thing I know is that I don't know anything"
• A criticism of Objectivist epistemology

References

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

External links

• Knowledge at the Ayn Rand Lexicon