Ayn Rand & Epistemology 13

Universals, definitions, and morality. In the 1949 book Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver advanced the following rather unusual argument:

Like MacBeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. [2-3]

Although Weaver's argument is phrased in platonistic terminology, in practical terms, it is not much different from Rand's:

Most philosophers did not intend to invalidate conceptual knowledge, but its defenders did more to destroy it than did its enemies. They were unable to offer a solution to the ‘problem of universals,’ that is: to define the nature and source of abstractions, to determine the relationship of concepts to perceptual data—and to prove the validity of scientific induction.... The philosophers were unable to refute the witch-doctors claim that their concepts were as arbitrary as his whims and that their scientific knowledge had no greater metaphysical validity than his revelations.

The differences in these two arguments is mostly terminological. Weaver seems more focused on the relation between universals and what he calls "transcendentals," by which he means, moral law. Rand, on the other hand, stresses the link between universals and knowledge in general, particularly "scientific" knowledge, which she contrasts with religious revelation. However, when we examine IOTE more closely, we find that Rand shares Weaver's passion for moral universals. The attack on universals, for both Rand and Weaver, is primarily an attack on the moral foundations of Western society.

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Essences as "epistemological." Rand explains this rather odd juxtaposition of terms as follows:

Let us note . . . the radical difference between Aristotle’s view of concepts and the Objectivist view, particularly in regard to the issue of essential characteristics.

It is Aristotle who first formulated the principles of correct definition. It is Aristotle who identified the fact that only concretes exist. But Aristotle held that definitions refer to metaphysical essences, which exist in concretes as a special element or formative power, and he held that the process of concept-formation depends on a kind of direct intuition by which man’s mind grasps these essences and forms concepts accordingly.

Aristotle regarded “essence” as metaphysical; Objectivism regards it as epistemological.

Objectivism holds that the essence of a concept is that fundamental characteristic(s) of its units on which the greatest number of other characteristics depend, and which distinguishes these units from all other existents within the field of man's knowledge. Thus the essence of a concept is determined contextually and may be altered with the growth of man's knowledge. [IOTE, 52]

Rand Cultist Quote of the Day

The ARI's Yaron Brook:
“Unless Ayn Rand changes the direction of the world, we are doomed to suffer another dark ages...the next renaissance will begin when her books are rediscovered after 1,000 years of darkness.”

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Natural kinds. Rand claimed to have solved the "problem of universals." But it is not clear that she even understood this problem. Rand frames the problem as follows:

The issue of concepts (known as "the problem of universals") is philosophy's central issue. Since man's knowledge is gained and held in conceptual form, the validity of man's knowledge depends on the validity of concepts. But concepts are abstractions or universals, and everything that man perceives is particular, concrete. What is the relationship between abstractions and concretes? To what precisely do concepts refer in reality? Do they refer to something real, something that exist--or are they merely inventions of man's mind, arbitrary constructs or loose approximations that cannot claim to represent knowledge?

Now contrast that with how the issue is framed on Wikipedia:

The problem of universals is an ancient problem in metaphysics about whether universals exist. Universals are general or abstract qualities, characteristics, properties, kinds or relations, such as being male/female, solid/liquid/gas, or a certain colour,[1] that can be predicated of individuals or particulars, or that individuals or particulars can be regarded as sharing or participating in. For example, Scott, Pat, and Chris have in common the universal quality of being human or humanity. While many standard cases of universals are also typically regarded as abstract objects (such as humanity), abstract objects are not necessarily universals. For example, numbers can be held to be particular yet abstract objects.

Rand's version of the problem of universals is different from Wikipedia's. Now I have no interest in getting into an argument over which version is "correct." Wikipedia is merely relating how the mediavals originally framed the problem. Rand was far more interested in the epistemological side of the issue. In fact, she pretty much ignores the metaphysical issue — so much so that it is not always clear how to characterize Rand's position on universals. Without explicitly saying so, Rand seems to reject the view that universals exist in reality. Instead, she seems to adopt a version of conceptualism. Only particulars exist in reality; but concepts (which for Rand are identical with universals) correspond "objectively" to multiple instances of particulars in reality. But how do they do so? Rand replies: A concept refers to a group of particulars in reality possessing characteristics in common which differ only in their measurements. This, however, is rather vague. Rand attacked nominalism for regarding "abstractions" as mere "'names' which we give to arbitrary groupings of concretes on the basis of vague resemblances." [IOTE, 2] But why isn't Rand's own theory guilty of the same charge? What makes her theory "objective" and nominalism "arbitrary"? Rand never explains, she merely asserts.

Rand and Ryan

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand... " - Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan

This is quite an interesting quote. It's rather along the lines of saying:

"The reason I got involved in business, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Karl Marx..."

"The reason I got involved in warfare, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Mahatma Ghandi..."

"The reason I got involved in Judaism, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ..."

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The Problem of Universals. Rand wrote (in an oft-quoted passage here at ARCHN):

To negate man's mind, it is the conceptual level of his consciousness that has to be invalidated. Most philosophers did not intend to invalidate conceptual knowledge, but its defenders did more to destroy it than did its enemies. They were unable to offer a solution to the ‘problem of universals,’ that is: to define the nature and source of abstractions, to determine the relationship of concepts to perceptual data—and to prove the validity of scientific induction.... The philosophers were unable to refute the witch-doctors claim that their concepts were as arbitrary as his whims and that their scientific knowledge had no greater metaphysical validity than his revelations. [FTNI, 30]

What evidence does Rand provide for this view? No relevant evidence. Only an obscure quote from an obscure historian of pragmatism:

All knowledge is in terms of concepts. If these concepts correspond to something that is to be found in reality they are real and man's knowledge has a foundation in fact; if they do not correspond to anything in reality they are not real and man's knowledge is of mere figments of his own imagination. [Edward C. Moore, quoted by Rand, IOTE, 1-2]

Note that Moore says nothing about the problem of universals and its relation to concepts. That connection Rand made on her own. I'm not aware of any major modern philosopher who has ever suggested that the failure to solve the problem of universals invalidates conceptual knowledge. Most modern philosophers ignore the whole issue. If they discuss the issue of universals at all, it is only in passing.

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Necessary validity of the senses. Objectivism has a rather strange doctrine which could be summed up as "the senses never err." Percepts are "the given, the self-evident." [IOTE, 5] The validity of the senses is "axiomatic." Those that attempt to deny this validity commit the "fallacy of the stolen concept." As Peikoff explains:

The validity of the senses is not an independent axiom; it is a corollary of the fact of consciousness.... If man is conscious of that which is, then his means of awareness are means of awareness, i.e., are valid. One cannot affirm consciousness while denying its primary form, which makes all the others possible. Just as any attack on consciousness negates itself, so does any attack on the senses. If the senses are not valid, neither are any concepts, including the ones used in the attack. [OPAR, ch. 2]

This is a very poor argument. Indeed, most of Rand's "stolen concept" arguments, particularly those relating to epistemology, are very poor. All "attacks" on the senses are ultimately attacks against the view that knowledge refers to something "out there," in "reality." Such attacks cannot be regarded as claims of knowledge; rather, they are radical denials of all knowledge. Although such denials are not true, they are not self-contradictory. But even if they were self-contradictory, it would not help Rand's case. Merely because someone makes a bad argument against x does not prove that x is "necessarily valid." Bad arguments against the validity of the senses cannot be used to establish the validity of the senses!

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Objectivist Theory of Perception. When it comes to the issue of perception, Rand tries to have it both ways. She seeks to be a direct realist while at the same time evading the charge of being naive or overly literal. She developed a theory that came suspiciously close to representationalism, but she fiercely denied being an indirect realist.

Rand left the exposition of her theory of perception to Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley. It is summed up on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as follows:

Our perceptual faculties place us in direct contact with reality. In this sense Rand's theory of perception is a version of direct realism, holding that the objects of perception are extramental entities (rather than, say, subjective experiences on the basis of which we infer entities as their causes)....  

Rand rejects the view that some perceptions are of the qualities of objects as they are independently of us (primary qualities), whereas others (secondary qualities) are caused by the primary qualities, and are entirely in the mind. Instead, she distinguishes between the content of a perception and its form; when we perceive an object as, e.g., square and red, what we perceive are its intrinsic features in a certain form, a form that is determined by the nature of the object, the nature of our perceptual organs, and the environment. Thus, we perceive the object's shape as square, and the reflectance properties of its surface as red; both are the result of the interaction of our perceptual organs with what is out there. Neither squareness nor redness belong either to the object apart from our mode of perception, or to our mode of perception apart from the object in its environment. Hence, these attributes are neither intrinsic nor subjective but relational and objective.
Thus while Rand is a direct realist in the sense explained above, she is not a naive realist in the sense of regarding all perceived attributes as enjoying equal extramental status. 

The point in dispute involves the term "extramental." As far as I know, that is not a term either Rand or Peikoff have ever used. Its use is required only because Objectivists have never told us whether percepts are mental or not. That is an issue they have artfully dodged, and here is why: if they were to admit that percepts are mental entities (as they admit, for example, that concepts are), they would be confessing that their realism is indirect and perhaps even representational. So when the Stanford Encylopedia decided to do a write-up on Ayn Rand (under the advisement of such Objectivist worthies as David Kelley and Gregory Salmieri), they had no choice but to describe percepts as "extra-mental."

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Fallacious Presumptions: The validity of knowledge depends on "proper" concept formation. Rand assumes that the "validity" of conceptual knowledge (and therefore knowledge in general) depends on how scrupulous and careful individuals form concepts:

The status of automatized knowledge in his mind is experienced by man as if it had a direct, effortless, self-evident quality (and certainty) of perceptual awareness. But it is conceptual knowledge --- and its validity depends on the precision of his concepts, which require as strict a precision of meaning (i.e., as strict a knowledge of what specific referents they subsume) as the definitions of mathematical terms. (It is obvious what disasters will follow if one automatizes errors, contradictions and undefined approximations.)

This paragraph provides the very core of what is wrong with Rand's epistemology; and it will require a number of posts to identify and elucidate all the various fallacious branches that sprout from this one trunk. Right now I wish to concentrate on the final sentence, the one embalmed in parenthesis: It is obvious what disasters will follow if one automatizes errors, contradictions and undefined approximations. Is it really obvious? Rand's assertion assumes the following: (1) concepts can be erroneous; (2) concepts can be contradictory; and (3) improper concept formation leads to concepts that are ill defined and merely approximate. I will contend that these three presumptions are wrong.

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Fallacious Presumptions: Rand's implicit theory of mind. Although Rand never developed a complete theory of mind, an implicit theory of the mind underlies many of her epistemological assertions. Indeed, it could be argued that Rand doesn't have just one but actually several implicit theories of mind, and that she makes use of which ever one is needed for the situation at hand.

The more fully developed theory underlies Rand's view of "automatization":

Learning to speak is a process of automatizing the use (i.e., the meaning and the application) of concepts. And more: all learning involves a process of automatizing, i.e., of first acquiring knowledge by fully conscious, focused attention and observation, then of establishing mental connections which make that knowledge automatic (instantly available as a context), thus freeing man's mind to pursue further, more complex knowledge. [IOTE, 65]

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Fallacious Presumptions: the facts upon which epistemology is based are discoverable through introspection. Early on in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand makes the following observation:

Two questions are involved in his every conclusion, conviction, decision, choice or claim: What do I know?—and: How do I know it?

It is the task of epistemology to provide the answer to the “How?”—which then enables the special sciences to provide the answers to the “What?”

Epistemology, according to Rand, tells us how we know? But how does epistemology know how we know? What gives epistemology its special authority to answer such a question? Rand never thinks to raise this query, let alone answer it. Yet it's a question that cuts to the very heart of Rand's epistemological project. It's a question Rand herself could never have answered, because her epistemology, as she conceived and practiced it, is a fraud.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 4

Fallacious Presumptions: over-emphasizing how one attains knowledge. In his book on logic, John Stuart Mill asserted the following: "By far the greatest portion of our knowledge, whether of general truths or of particular facts, being avowedly matter of inference, nearly the whole, not only of science, but of human conduct, is amenable to the authority of logic." This is the predominant view of what might be called the classical tradition in philosophy, running through Aristotle, Aquinas, and the early moderns. It is largely consistent with what Objectivism holds:

Logic is man’s method of reaching conclusions objectively by deriving them without contradiction from the facts of reality—ultimately, from the evidence provided by man’s senses. If men reject logic, then the tie between their mental processes and reality is severed; all cognitive standards are repudiated, and anything goes; any contradiction, on any subject, may be endorsed (and simultaneously rejected) by anyone, as and when he feels like it.

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Fallacious Presumptions: Active Consciousness.  In my last post, I discussed what I described as the primary fallacy behind the Objectivist epistemology, which involves Rand's conviction that justifying our knowledge is necessary to save western civilization. This fallacy, however egregious, merely touches the setting of the Objectivist epistemology within the larger body of Rand's philosophy. It doesn't actually touch upon the doctrines that constitute Rand's epistemology. The ad consequentiam fallacy upon which much of the persuasive force of the Objectivist epistemology rests does not, in itself, prove that this epistemology is fallacious; it merely serves as a distraction to objective analysis. Once we remove the cloud of danger in which Rand cloaks her speculations, we can begin to look at the Objectivist epistemology with colder, more analytical eyes. 

Objectivist To Run Cato (Temporarily)

Successful banker and Ayn Rand Institute board member John Allison IV has been appointed as the acting head of Cato following an ugly public battle for control between former head Ed Crane and the fellow founders Koch brothers. Allison, while reasonably prominent, is a rather bland figure if his recent interview in Ayn Rand Nation is anything to go by. Certainly while he substantially funded various Rand related programs in a few colleges, there seems little about his values-based approach in his former bank, BB&T, that is actually very Randian. If anything it's old-fashioned conservative business ethics, and somewhat refreshing at that. Probably the most interesting thing about it is the spectacle of an ARIan consorting openly with libertarians! Clearly the Yaron Brook approach of corporatist compromise rather than purist isolationism is winning out at ARI HQ. Former Cato employee Will Wilkinson has some concerns as to foreign policy however. Watch this space.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 2

The primary fallacy behind the Objectivist Epistemology. Since human cognition (mostly) operates below the threshold of consciousness, the operations of the mind are not available to introspection; nor can these operations be deduced a priori, since no matter of fact can be determined by a priori reasoning. Rand, in embarking on her epistemological project, found herself in a bit of a bind. She could not base her epistemology on experience (i.e., introspection) or on logic, since neither of these processes can penetrate beneath the veil of the cognitive unconscious. Where, then, is the persuasive force behind Rand's epistemology? How was Rand to convince her followers that her epistemological speculations accorded with reality?

Unable to appeal either to fact or logic, Rand appealed to an old standby: sheer intimidation. If she couldn't persuade with sweet reason, she would resort to browbeating instead. Here's how it works. Rand begins by arbitrarily declaring that man's mind is under attack and needs to be defended.

To negate man's mind, it is the conceptual level of his consciousness that has to be invalidated. Most philosophers did not intend to invalidate conceptual knowledge, but its defenders did more to destroy it than did its enemies. They were unable to offer a solution to the ‘problem of universals,’ that is: to define the nature and source of abstractions, to determine the relationship of concepts to perceptual data—and to prove the validity of scientific induction.... The philosophers were unable to refute the witch-doctors claim that their concepts were as arbitrary as his whims and that their scientific knowledge had no greater metaphysical validity than his revelations. [FTNI, 30]

By "invalidating" conceptual knowledge, modern philosophers opened the door to mysticism, altruism, and collectivism:

It is the philosophy of the mysticism-altruism-collectivism axis that has brought us to our present state and is carrying us toward a finale such as that of the society presented in Atlas Shrugged. It is only the philosophy of the reason-individualism-capitalism axis that can save us and carry us, instead, toward the Atlantis projected in the last two pages of my novel. 

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 1

Introduction. Now we venture forth into the thorniest reaches of Rand's philosophy: the Objectivist Epistemology. Rand's epistemology is largely speculative and rationalistic. It's conclusions were determined well in advance and the arguments were added later. It contains a great deal of what can only be described as imaginary assumptions; that is, assumptions presumably based on "introspection," which, as is well known from experimental psychology, is illusory, at least in terms of monitoring cognition. Most of our thinking occurs below the threshold of consciousness, hidden from view; so how Rand actually knows the things she claims to know about human cognition is often a bewildering mystery. One of the main conceits of Objectivism is that epistemology provides a method of cognition:

Man is a being of volitional consciousness: beyond the level of percepts—a level inadequate to the cognitive requirements of his survival—man has to acquire knowledge by his own effort, which he may exercise or not, and by a process of reason, which he may apply correctly or not. Nature gives him no automatic guarantee of his mental efficacy; he is capable of error, of evasion, of psychological distortion. He needs a method of cognition, which he himself has to discover: he must discover how to use his rational faculty, how to validate his conclusions, how to distinguish truth from falsehood, how to set the criteria of what he may accept as knowledge. Two questions are involved in his every conclusion, conviction, decision, choice or claim: What do I know?—and: How do I know it? It is the task of epistemology to provide the answer to the “How?”—which then enables the special sciences to provide the answers to the “What?”

Ayn Rand & Human Nature 26

Human nature and politics. Rand's politics is not entirely free of the contagion of her view of man. Rand's so-called "philosophy of history" (i.e., her theory of historical change) acts as a transmission belt between her theory of human nature and her political philosophy.


(1) An individual's political philosophy depend on his ethics, which depends on his epistemology/metaphysics. If by ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics you mean explicit philosophy, this view is inapplicable to most people. Explicit philosophies tend to be mere rationalizations: self-conscious window dressing draped over the cognitive unconscious, which does most of the heavy cognitive lifting and does not think in terms of broad philosophical abstractions. Moreover, the genesis of explicit philosophies generally suggests that the causation tends to go in the other direction; that is to say, people tend to begin with a political philosophy, which they rationalize with various ethical rationalizations. Epistemology and metaphysics are usually ignored altogether; but when they are brought in at all, they are almost always brought in last. This is true even in Rand's case. Her early writings are dominated by politcal and ethical concerns; only later did she begin to dabble in metaphysics and epistemology

Now one way to skirt around these objections is to contend that individuals have "implicit" philosophies in which the political depends on the ethical, and the ethical on the epistemological, and so on. Everyone, Rand contended, has a philosophy; and if they don't have an explicit philosophy, they must have an implicit one.

The trouble here is that Rand's view of how implicit philosophies are developed and formed is heavily influenced by her false view of human mind. For Rand, an individual's implicit philosophy is formed by premises that have been integrated by the "conscious" mind:

Your subconscious is like a computer—more complex a computer than men can build—and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don’t reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance—and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions—which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values. If you programmed your computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your values and emotions. If you didn’t, you don’t....

The quality of a computer’s output is determined by the quality of its input. If your subconscious is programmed by chance, its output will have a corresponding character. You have probably heard the computer operators’ eloquent term “gigo”—which means: “Garbage in, garbage out.” The same formula applies to the relationship between a man’s thinking and his emotions.

As I have stated repeatedly, there is no evidence that the human mind works like this, and an enormous amount of evidence that it doesn't. Human behavior, whether political or otherwise, is not determined or strongly influenced by broad philosophical premises. Whether those premises are explicit or implicit is entirely irrelevant. Rand got this wrong in a very big way and it has enormous implications for her political philosophy. For Rand needs this doctrine to make her political philosophy realizable. In order for Objectivism to achieve its political ends, political philosophy must depend on ethics, which in turn must depend on metaphysics/epistemology; because if this is not so, then Objectivism becomes politically impotent.

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Human nature and ethics. Among Rand's more enlightened admirers, there is a tendency to simply ignore Rand's obvious cluelessness about human nature and to instead concentrate on those aspects of her philosophy that depend much less on her view of man. Rand, it is acknowledged, may have been mistaken about man and history. But Rand's view of man is hardly the kernel of Objectivism. What most Objectivists care the most about are Rand's ethical and political views. They constitute the very heart of Objectivism. It is on such subjects that Rand has the most to offer.

But is this view in fact true? Are Rand's ethics and politics free from the contamination of her view of man? Not necessarily so. In this post, I will examine the extent to which Rand's ethics depend on her theory of human nature.

Rand's view of man contains several assumptions important to her ethics:

(1) Reason as a source of motivation. Although Rand never claimed that reason can be a source of motivation, her ethics tacitly assumes it. When Rand declares that values can be objective and absolute, free from the taint of "whims" and other natural dispositions, she is in effect declaring that human beings can be motivated solely by reason, without any reference to sentiments, desires, or innate proclivities. This position is deeply problematic: for in the absence of emotive content, how can we explain why anyone would value something? To say that a value is entirely rational and objective, free from the taint of whims and other subjective arcana, is to suggest that values can be determined without reference to emotive content. Rand never clearly explained how this was possible. And there is a good reason for this: it is not possible. Rand defines reason as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses." Reason, in other words, is a faculty which engages in a task. It does not provide motivations, desires, sentiments, etc. At best, reason can tell you how to attain an end; but it cannot tell you why you should pursue a given end. An end must be pursued for its own sake, independent of "reason." The faculty that "identifies" and "integrates" sensory material is not the faculty that provides motivations. People are motivated, not by identification and integration, but by sentiment and desire.

Oddly, this incoherence about motives is reflected in Rand's theory of human nature by her strange doctrine of primary choice. According to Objectivism, “The choice to focus is man’s primary choice. Until a man is in focus his mental machinery is unable to think, judge or evaluate. The choice to throw the switch is thus the root choice on which all the other choices depend” [L Peikoff, OPAR, 59) What is particularly odd about this doctrine is that this primary choice is regarded as something that cannot be explained (that is why it's "primary"). Now let's stop and think about this for a moment. How are choices normally explained? Usually, in reference to some motivation. People decide to behave in a certain manner for specific reasons; and those reasons constitute their motives. To say that a choice cannot be explained is therefore tantamount to declaring that it is unmotivated. The primary choice for Objectivism, the "root choice on which all other choices depend," is an unmotivated choice. Thus incoherence, and, indeed, outright denial of motivation lies at the very heart of the Objectivist theory of human nature, just as it does at the heart of its ethics.

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Human Nature and epistemology. Some Objectivists, particularly of the non-orthodox variety, are willing to admit that Rand's theory of human nature is flawed. They merely fail to appreciate what this means in the context of the rest of her philosophy. Rand's theory of human nature is not some extraneous doctrine which can easily be amputated from the rest of Objectivism. Many doctrines in other branches of Rand's philosophy depend on Rand's view of human nature. If that view is incorrect or flawed, this has enormous implications for the rest of Objectivism.

In her theory of human nature, Rand made several assumptions important to her epistemology:

(1) That there is nothing in the unconscious (or "subconscious") that is not acquired by conscious means. Orthodox Objectivism is rather inflexible in its view on this matter. Leonard Peikoff, during the Q & A of his lectures on Objectivism (and in the presence of Ayn Rand), explained the Objectivist position as follows:

Objectivism does not subscribe to the idea of an unconscious at all. We use the term “subconscious” instead—and that is simply a name for the content of your mind that you are not focused on at any given moment. It is simply a repository for past information or conclusions that you were once conscious of in some form, but that are now stored beneath the threshold of consciousness. There is nothing in the subconscious besides what you acquired by conscious means. The subconscious does perform automatically certain important integrations (sometimes these are correct, sometimes not), but the conscious mind is always able to know what these are (and to correct them, if necessary). The subconscious has no purposes or values of its own, and it does not engage in diabolical manipulations behind the scenes. In that sense, it is certainly not “dynamic.”

This view of subconscious (i.e., unconscious) mental processes is simply wrong. Empirical psychology has discovered that consciousness is merely the tip of the iceberg, and that the "adaptive" unconscious plays a much larger role in cognition and decision making than most people realize:

Some of Freud’s ideas [about human unconscious] have been verified, at least in a general sense. For example, one of the basic premises of psychoanalysis — that people possess unconscious defensive processes that protect their self-esteem — has been well established. But Freud’s view of an infantile, primitive unconscious has proved to be far too limited; the unconscious is much more sophisticated and powerful than he imagined. Humans possess a powerful set of psychological processes that are critical for survival and operate behind the conscious mental scene. 

These processes, called the “adaptive unconscious,” are intimately involved in how we size up our world, perceive danger, initiate action, and set our goals. It is the unconscious that allows us to learn our native language with no conscious effort, recognize patterns in our environments while we think about something else, and develop reliable intuitions to guide our actions.

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Rand's arguments against innate predispositions. As far as I can make out, Rand made two arguments against innate predispositions: (1) argument from free will; and (2) the argument from innate ideas. Each argument is forced and will only convince die hard Objectivists. The sort of "reasoning" Rand employs is precisely of the sort employed in rationalization: which is to say, the conclusion of the argument has been determined ahead of time; there was never any chance of Rand concluding, from the weakness of her arguments or the absence of evidence, that she was wrong.

(1) Argument from free will. The argument appears in Galt's Speech:

Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a “tendency” to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free. 

While this is directed against a specific set of tendencies (i.e., "tendency" to evil), it (presumably) is meant to apply to all tendencies. Like so many arguments in Objectivism, it tacitly assumes premises which are either contrary to experience or inconsistent with Objectivism's general outlook. The argument equates free will with the ability to choose. If something cannot be chosen, the will can't be regarded as free. Since an innate proclivity cannot be chosen, Rand's argument, if it were consisently applied, would over-rule all such proclivities. Human beings, for example, will experience hunger if they have not eaten in a long time. This tendency is almost certainly innate: so why doesn't it abrogate free will? A man does not choose to be hungry; it is a hardwired feature which he is born with. Nonetheless, no Objectivist would argue that hunger for food is contrary to free will. Yet if a man experienced a hunger for status and if this hunger was assumed to be innate, this would be considered contrary to free will!