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The Evolution of the Objective In this essay, I will sort out Rand's various formulations of these concepts, including her now-abandoned term "objective reality" and her famous "intrinsic-objective-subjective" (IOS) trichotomy, and relate them to the traditional false dichotomy of objective-subjective, which was inspired by Kant's twist on the original Scholastic concept of the "objective." Then I will point out how I think Rand's and Peikoff's and others' thinking on the objective has gone astray, and where a properly redirected focus might lead us. (An earlier form of these comments were delivered to the Advanced Seminar of the Objectivist Center in 2003 at Waltham, Massachusetts.) (1) The Objective as Mind-Independent: a Philosophical Error Before the Trichotomy was “Objective Reality.” Rand’s original formulation of “objectivity” ("Who is the final authority in ethics?", Objectivist Newsletter) was twofold, but it had nothing to do with the IOS trichotomy, formulated and published mere months later in the same publication (in her essay "What is Capitalism?"). Nor was it equivalent to the distinction in this essay between the ontologically objective and the epistemically objective (itself drawn from my own analysis of Rand's discussion in "What is Capitalism?"). Instead, Rand first focused on objectivity as an ethical matter, an aspect of rationality. For Rand, rationality, the basic virtue, entailed the respect for and recognition of facts. Every other virtue was an aspect of rationality and involved, in some way, the recognition of a significant fact of reality. Objectivity, too, was for Rand (1965a) a virtue, in that it involved one’s recognition of two basic aspects of “the relationship of consciousness to existence” (7). In each case, however, it must be remembered that we are speaking of the objectivity not of reality, but of one’s recognition of how reality and awareness relate to one another—i.e., not of “objective reality,” but of one’s objective recognition of reality’s being independent of awareness. That is, both elements of the distinction in Rand's first 1965 essay are volitional aspects of what I call epistemic objectivity, i.e., a consciousness (and person) that is adhering to reality. It is not until later that year that Rand succeeded in articulating both epistemic objectivity, in its more general form, and ontological objectivity. As for reality, it does not, strictly speaking, have objectivity. Reality only has objectivity in relation to consciousness. Thus, to speak of reality as being objective, apart from consciousness, is a misnomer, which Rand took pains to correct by introducing the term “intrinsic” in referring to existence apart from consciousness. In this way, she was able to abandon the misleading phrase of “objective reality.” The metaphysical aspect of this basic respect for facts, now most commonly referred to by Objectivists as the Primacy of Existence, is sometimes also referred to as “metaphysical objectivity” or “metaphysical objectivism” or “metaphysical realism.” Rand’s phrase “objective reality” thus was taken to reflect this metaphysical view, that reality is the object, not the subject or creation of consciousness. But is this true? In one sense, no. Consciousness is real, too, and some real aspects of consciousness are generated by, created by, a person’s conscious acts. Both subjective aspects such as dreams or imagination and objective aspects such as sense data are generated by consciousness (i.e., a person’s being conscious). But in another sense, yes. Even things generated by consciousness are not generated by an act of consciousness that views them. Thus, while consciousness (i.e., a person being conscious) helps create objective and subjective (but not intrinsic) phenomena, consciousness (a person being conscious) does not create them in the process of viewing them (i.e., holding them as its object). Everything that is held as the object of an act of viewing consciousness is independent of that act of consciousness. In other words, everything that is held as the object of an act of viewing consciousness has metaphysical primacy over that act of consciousness. Even subjective phenomena (e.g., fantasies, etc.) have metaphysical primacy over an act of consciousness that holds them as its object! So, "objective reality" is a misleading term. In full, it means: that which, in existing (or being able to exist) as the object of an act of consciousness is not thereby the creation of that act of consciousness. (In other words, reality exists apart from consciousness, but it is not objective apart from consciousness. Everything that exists is "objective" in this sense, even subjective (consciousness- generated) phenomena and intrinsic (non-consciousness-generated) phenomena. This use of the term is vacuous, which may be why Rand quietly phased it out in favor of Primacy of Existence. Furthermore, “mind-independent” is vacuous in this sense, as well. Everything that is being held as the object of a mind is uncreated by and thus independent of that act of a mind—even subjective phenomena that are generated by some other act of a mind than the act that views them. The only sense of “mind-independent” that is not vacuous is that which pertains to things that are uncreated by any act of mind (i.e., intrinsic phenomena)—as against things that are generated by an act of mind (i.e., objective and subjective phenomena). And the only sense of “objective” that is not vacuous is that which pertains to things insofar as they are held as the object of an act of consciousness—as against the “intrinsic” (i.e., things apart from an act of consciousness that holds them as its object)—and as against the “subjective” (i.e., acts of awareness apart from a thing that they hold as their object. Thus, “mind-independent” in the non-vacuous sense and “intrinsic” are equivalent terms. However, the former has seriously misleading implications. The “mind-independent/mind-dependent” distinction is a non-fundamental distinction, a package deal, lumping together the polar opposite of mind-independence (the subjective) with a third view that is fundamentally opposed to both of them (the objective). The non-vacuous sense of “objective,” however, has no misleading implications. It fundamentally opposes itself to both false, incomplete alternatives, showing them to be “opposite sides of the same coin.” For this reason, the “mind-independent/mind-dependent” distinction, and its other traditional form, “objective/subjective,” should be avoided as vacuous. Instead, Rand's trichotomy of intrinsic-objective-subjective should be adopted as a fundamental distinction of mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive possibilities. (2) "Objective Reality": Rand and the Scholastics vs. Kant From a historical perspective, it is helpful to note the stark clash between the traditional (i.e., Kantian) view of the “objective” and the Randian view, which has much in common with the pre-Kantian (Cartesian and Scholastic) views. The Oxford English Dictionary notes and explains the shift in meanings that occurred. Prior to Kant, “subjective” referred to the nature of a thing in itself (i.e., as a thing, a subject), as opposed to “objective,” which referred to the nature of a thing as it is presented to (i.e., the object of) consciousness. After Descartes, the term “subjective” was constricted to refer specifically to the nature of the perceiving or thinking consciousness, while “objective” is used to refer to what is considered as independent of the perceiving or thinking self. Although these latter usages of “subjective” and “objective” sporadically appeared in the late 1600s and early 1700s, the OED notes, “current use appears to be derived from Kant, and to appear in English subsequently to 1790, and chiefly after 1817.” The pivotal concept and change in meaning that drove this shift in senses of “objective” is the concept “subjective.” Once the meaning of “subject” changed from that of an existent, whether conscious or not, to that of a conscious being, it was inevitable that “objective” would lose the meaning of an existent before the mind and instead take on the meaning of an existent apart from the mind. Thus arose the traditional false dichotomy of the objective vs. the subjective. Rand’s, as well as certain Aristotelians’ solution to the objective-subjective false dichotomy is to reject the traditional conceptual framework and to deny the claim that the mind-independent is properly called “objective.” Rand’s tack has been to refer to that which exists independently of one’s awareness of it as “intrinsic.” This is a major shift from her earlier terminology, referring to mind-independent reality as "Objective Reality," a phrase she pretty much stopped using after the mid-1960s. Peikoff says in OPAR that this metaphysical usage is "harmless," since it is really just another label for Primacy of Existence (existence being independent of consciousness). But surely it's not that benign. (Besides, it's Kantian!) (3) Rand's Trichotomy: not one, but two aspects of the objective Rand's IOS trichotomy, which she first introduced in late 1965 in "What is Capitalism?", thus appears to involve a return to the original use of the term “objective,” pertaining to an existent before the mind, while retaining the more restrictive modern use of the term “subjective,” pertaining to a mind. The view that the good is "objective," Rand said, is the view that the good is "an aspect of reality in relation to man." The good, and the objective in general, is an aspect of existence insofar as it is being adhered to by an act of consciousness. But this is just one side of the equation—or the act-object, consciousness-existence relation. There is also the act of awareness that adheres to reality. And in her discussion of the "objective" view of the good, Rand also identifies this aspect of the "objective," when he says that the good is "an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness." The good, and the objective in general, is an act of consciousness insofar as it is adhering to an aspect of existence. Thus, there are two aspects of the "objective"—an aspect pertaining to existence in relation to consciousness, and an aspect pertaining to consciousness in relation to existence. (To keep them distinct in my mind, I sometimes call the former one the "ontological" or "metaphysical" objective—and the latter one the "epistemic" or "epistemological" objective. But they are inseparable aspects of a single situation.) Much of Rand's and Peikoff's subsequent (i.e., post-1965) discussion of the "objective" focused on this second aspect: the nature of a reality-adhering consciousness—rather than the first aspect: the nature of reality when it is in the situation of being adhered to by consciousness. But for a brief period in the early 1970s, before Rand mistakenly persuaded him that he was in error, Peikoff had a very helpful formulation of the whole issue of the ontological status of sense data. At that time, he presented perception as a process that adheres to reality, and sense data as aspects of reality insofar as we are perceptually adhering to them. Several years later (by 1975), however, Peikoff had abandoned this formulation of his discussion of perception, and years later, in Objectivism: the State of the Art, he named it as one of his big errors. What turned Peikoff around (unfortunately) was Rand's argument that only volitional acts of awareness (and not perception) could be "objective," since one can only adhere to reality by an act of choice. Peikoff later echoed this argument in OPAR. Surely, though, this is not correct. Even though conceptual grasping of reality requires deliberate choice, the perceptual grasp of reality is automatic. We automatically adhere (attach) to reality in perception; but this does not make it any less objective, any less adherent to reality. There are at least two unfortunate effects of this deviation from the original form of the trichotomy. One is that the range of application of the trichotomy, and the clarity of understanding thereby gained, was shrunken down—and one of the most clarifying applications of it (the nature of perception) abandoned. Another is that the initial move Rand made back toward the original meaning of "objective"—reality held as the object of awareness—seems to have been largely abandoned, in favor of a focus on awareness holding reality as its object. This abandonment seems to be fueled mainly by the mistaken view that adherence to reality is only volitional, and not (as in perception) automatic. Which is curious, when you consider that Objectivism also argues strenuously for "the Validity of the Senses!" The current trend in Objectivism (e.g., Peikoff [1991], Ross [2001]) is to regard intrinsicism, objectivism, and subjectivism as epistemological—i.e., as theories of knowledge and methods or styles of thinking. This perspective follows from a tendency to exclusively focus on what I call the epistemically objective, to the exclusion of the ontologically objective. Does a person gain knowledge by a focus on reality and does that focus has an identity? Does consciousness adhere to, or hold as its object, some aspect of reality and, if so, how does it do so? However, this is only one aspect of the story, and it overlooks the perspective that follows from a consideration of the aspect what I call the ontologically objective. In this respect, intrinsicism, objectivism, and subjectivism are metaphysical doctrines, theories of the ontological status of a number of phenomena of considerable interest and importance in philosophy, phenomena that come to our attention when we focus on a relation between consciousness and existence. For instance, is the good an attribute of a thing one values, apart from one’s conscious rational awareness of it? (Intrinsicism) Or is the good an attribute of a thing one values, apart from the nature of the thing valued? (Subjectivism) Or is the good an attribute of a thing one values that is the product of one’s rational awareness of some aspect of the thing’s identity? (Objectivism) In other words, as Rand (1966) asks: is the good an aspect of reality apart from man’s awareness of it, or an aspect of man’s consciousness apart from the nature of reality, or “an aspect of reality in relation to man” (21)? Armed with these two perspectives and sets of concepts, we now have a more balanced view of the structural and methodological nature of the philosophy of Objectivism. Furthermore, in practical terms, we are now better prepared to address a number of issues in philosophy, such as the ontological objectivity of sense data, the ontological objectivity of mind, and the epistemic objectivity of our awareness of mind (i.e., the validity of introspection). People often ask how we might improve or advance Objectivism. I think that what I have just outlined is one very promising direction to explore. It is sad that Rand turned herself and one of her most promising spokesmen away from this avenue of research, and that she never realized all that she had asked him to surrender, for the misguided sake of elevating volition to an all-consuming dominance in metaphysics and epistemology that it does not merit. References Bissell, Roger. 2003. "Mind and will as objective phenomena: the ontological status of introspective data." Presented to The Objectivist Center 2003 Advanced Seminar, Bentley College at Waltham, Massachusetts. Peikoff, Leonard. 1970. Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present. Taped Lecture Series. Oceanside, California: Lectures on Objectivism. __________. 1972. Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume. Taped Lecture Series. Oceanside, California: Lectures on Objectivism. __________. 1976. The Philosophy of Objectivism. Taped Lecture Series. Oceanside, California: Lectures on Objectivism. __________. 1987. Objectivism: the State of the Art. Taped Lecture Series. Oceanside, California: Lectures on Objectivism. __________. 1991. Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton. Raibley, Jason. 2002. "Rand on the objectivity of values." Presented to The Objectivist Center 2002 Advanced Seminar, UCLA at Los Angeles, California. Rand, Ayn. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Signet. __________. 1960. For the New Intellectual. New York: Signet. __________. 1965a. "Who is the final authority in ethics?" In Rand-Branden (1962-65), Vol. 4, No. 2. ______ ___. 1965b. "What is capitalism?" In Rand 1967. __________. 1967. Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. New York: Signet. Rand, Ayn, and Nathaniel Branden, eds. 1962-65. The Objectivist Newsletter. Vols. 1-4. New York: The Objectivist. Ross, David. 2001. "The intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective." Presented to The Objectivist Center 2001 Summer Seminar, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
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