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:

• Existence exists.

• The law of identity.

• Consciousness is conscious.

• The law of causality.

• "Primacy of existence."

• "Primacy of consciousness."

• Facts are not "malleable."

• No alternative to a fact of reality is possible or imaginable.

• Consciousness has identity.

• Volition.

• The faculty of reason is the faculty of volition.

• The unit must be appropriate to the attribute being measured.

• Measurement-omission.

• The definitional principle is: wherever possible, an essential characteristic must be a fundamental.

• Crow epistemology

• Unit-economy

• 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.

• Rand's Razor

• The arbitrary cannot be cognitively processed.

• Mind-body integration.

• Life as the standard of value

In ethics, principles for behavior are known as virtues.