The Stolen Concept - an Understanding Failure to observe this principle — as in All property is theft — constitutes the fallacy of the stolen concept. Now let us examine a few of the more prevalent anti-reason tenets and observe how they rest on this fallacy. Consider the laws of logic. In the Aristotelian school of thought, these laws are recognized as being abstract formulations of self-evident truths, truths implicit in mans first perceptions of reality, implicit in the very concept of existence, of being qua being; these laws acknowledge the fact that to be, is to be something, that a thing is itself. Among many contemporary philosophers, it is fashionable to contest this view — and to assert that the axioms of logic are arbitrary or hypothetical. To declare that the axioms of logic are arbitrary is to ignore the context which gives rise to such a concept as the arbitrary. An arbitrary idea is one accepted by chance, caprice or whim; it stands in contradistinction to an idea accepted for logical reasons, from which it is intended to be distinguished. The existence of such a concept as an arbitrary idea is made possible only by the existence of logically necessary ideas; the former is not a primary; it is genetically dependent on the latter. To maintain that logic is arbitrary is to divest the concept arbitrary of meaning. To declare that the axioms of logic are hypothetical (or merely probable) is to be guilty of the same contradiction. The concept of the hypothetical (or the probable) is not a primary; it acquires meaning only in contradistinction to the known, the certain, the logically established. Only when one knows something which is certain, can one arrive at the idea of that which is not; and only logic can separate the latter from the former. An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. Let the caveman who does not choose to accept the axiom of identity, try to present his theory without using the concept of identity or any concept derived from it... (Atlas Shrugged). When neo-mystics challenge the concept of entity and announce that naive reason notwithstanding, all that exists is change and motion — (There is no logical impossibility in walking occurring as an isolated phenomenon, not forming part of any such series as we call a person, writes Bertrand Russell) — they are sweeping aside the fact that only the existence of entities makes the concepts change and motion possible; that change and motion presuppose entities which change and move; and that the man who proposes to dispense with the concept of entity loses his logical right to the concepts of change and motion: having dropped their genetic root, he no longer has any way to make them meaningful and intelligible. When neo-mystics assert that man perceives, not objective reality, but only an illusion or mere appearance — they evade the question of how one acquires such a concept as illusion or appearance without the existence of that which is not an illusion or mere appearance. If there were no objective perceptions of reality, from which illusions and appearances are intended to be distinguished, the latter concepts would be unintelligible. When neo-mystics declare that man can never know the facts of reality, they are declaring that man is not conscious. If man cannot know the facts of reality, he cannot know anything — because there is nothing else to know. If he cannot perceive existence, he cannot perceive anything — because there is nothing else to perceive. To know nothing and to perceive nothing is to be unconscious. But to arrive — by a complex chain of reasoning and a long string of such concepts as knowledge, perceive, evidence, infer, proof — at the conclusion that one is not conscious, is scarcely epistemologically admissible. We know that we know nothing, they chatter, blanking out the fact that they are claiming knowledge — There are no absolutes, they chatter, blanking out the fact that they are uttering an absolute — You cannot prove that you exist or that youre conscious, they chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence, consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of something to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a knowledge that has learned to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the unproved. (Atlas Shrugged). [The Stolen Concept by Nathaniel Branden. This essay was originally published in The Objectivist Newsletter in January 1963.]
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 15:16:01 +0000
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