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

Essences as "epistemological." Rand explains this rather odd juxtaposition of terms as follows: Let us note . . . the radical...

The ARI's Yaron Brook: “Unless Ayn Rand changes the direction of the world, we are doomed to suffer another dark ages...the next renais...

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

"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... " ...

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 ...

Necessary validity of the senses. Objectivism has a rather strange doctrine which could be summed up as "the senses never err." P...

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 reali...

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

Fallacious Presumptions: Rand's implicit theory of mind. Although Rand never developed a complete theory of mind, an implicit theory of...

Fallacious Presumptions: the facts upon which epistemology is based are discoverable through introspection. Early on in her Introduction to...

Fallacious Presumptions: over-emphasizing how one attains knowledge. In his book on logic, John Stuart Mill asserted the following: "...

Fallacious Presumptions: Active Consciousness.   In my last post, I discussed what I described as the primary fallacy behind the Objectivi...

Successful banker and Ayn Rand Institute board member John Allison IV  has been appointed as the acting head of Cato following a n ugly pub...

The primary fallacy behind the Objectivist Epistemology. Since human cognition (mostly) operates below the threshold of consciousness, the ...

Introduction. Now we venture forth into the thorniest reaches of Rand's philosophy: the Objectivist Epistemology. Rand's epistemolo...

Human nature and politics. Rand's politics is not entirely free of the contagion of her view of man. Rand's so-called "philoso...

Human nature and ethics. Among Rand's more enlightened admirers, there is a tendency to simply ignore Rand's obvious cluelessness a...

Human Nature and epistemology. Some Objectivists, particularly of the non-orthodox variety, are willing to admit that Rand's theory of ...

Rand's arguments against innate predispositions . As far as I can make out, Rand made two arguments against innate predispositions: (1) ...