Michael: “When you perceive that something exists, you are perceiving that, "It is." You are perceiving the self-evident fact that "It is", which means it exists, and the self-evident fact that "It is", which means it possess identity.”
Michael, as I understand it, Ayn Rand’s view of perception is that it is an automatic, brain-directed process, whereas a concept is the product of a volitional, mind-directed process. Yet above you appear to be saying that the concepts existence/identity are perceptually evident, even though that doesn’t square with Rand’s views on perception.
Further, you appear to be equating ‘existence exists’ with a ‘fact’: ‘something exists’ or ‘it is’. This is fine, but that’s a quite different meaning to ‘all that which exists’, which is the other meaning assigned to existence, as per the original quote from Rand in ITOE: “The units of the concepts ‘existence’ and ‘identity’ are every, etc…”
There’s simple way to resolve both these issues. Demonstrate how the concept ‘existence’ is formed via Rand’s method – perception, differentiation, similarity, measurement omission and so on.
Brendan
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