The rationalist core of the Objectivist Epistemology. Ayn Rand defined rationalists as "those who claimed that man obtains his knowled...

Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy 8: Propostions Redux. One attractive feature of Peikoff's essay on the Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy is that...

Definitions: postscript. Many Objectivists and even some non-Objectivists have difficulty understanding what is wrong with Rand's view ...

Definitions: conclusion. Rand's theory of definitions constitutes one of the most Aristolean aspects of her philosophy. There are, to b...

Definitions 10: Doctrine of Ostensive Definition. In my last post, I noted that definitions lead to an infinite regress. Once a word has be...

Definitions 9: Doctrine of Verbalism. Rand is very clear on the relation between knowledge and definitions: The truth or falsehood of a...

Definitions 8: Doctrine of the Hierarchy of Knowledge. Rand had the habit of drawing dubious premises from trivial premises. With her doctr...

Definitions 7: Doctrine of the Homogenuity of Reality. The doctrine of essentialism, as Karl Popper has noted, regards knowledge as sort of...

Definitions 6: Doctrine of Essentialism. Karl Popper provides the following gloss on essentialism: Like Plato, Aristotle believed that w...

Definitions 5: Doctrine of Essence. Rand introduces essences in the chapter on definitions. It is Aristotle who first formulated the p...

Definitions 4: Doctrine of Definitions as Platonic Ideas. While Rand did not explicitly believe that definitions were analogous to platonic...

Definitions 3: Doctrine of Anti-Concept and Invalid Concept. In Rand's infamous chapter on definitions in Introduction to the Objectivi...

Definitions 2: Doctrine of Concepts as the Principle Unit of Knowledge . This doctrine is expounded in Rand's Epistemological workshops:...

Definitions 1: The Doctrine of Immaculate Definitions. For Rand, the basic unit of human knowledge is the concept, which she defined as fo...

Definitions: Introduction. The heart and soul of Rand's Introduction to Objectivism Epistemology is the chapter on definitions. I have...

Fallacious Presumptions: The validity of knowledge depends on "proper" concept formation. Rand assumes that the "validity...