Epistemology - Reason

 

The only means to find knowledge of reality is through extrospective methods, because reality is objective. Therefore of great interest to us are these methods.

 

The name we give to this set of extrospective methods is reason. The three main methods of reason are:

 

• Logic - the art of non-contradictory identification.

• Concept-formation - the capacity to form and define concepts from percepts.

• Sense perception - the use of exterior stimuli to perceive the world around us.

 

Please note in passing that based on sense perception are logic and concept-formation, since by perception (although a rather basic kind) that we find the law of identity, and the percepts we need to integrate into concepts. The analytic/synthetic dichotomy that is so ubiquitous in philosophy is rejected by Objectivism: through the senses is what all knowledge is ultimately gained through, period. A discipline, such as mathematics or logic, does not get a "special status".

 

Our only role is to measure things, and they are what they are regardless of our wishes or hopes. This is not a passive role, unlike in metaphysics. The mind cannot wait passively for divine revelation or intuitive knowledge to spark; it only perceives reality instead of making it. Through observation, deduction, synthesis, experimentation, and so on, man must seek knowledge.

 

Objectivism's pivotal concept is reason. While the previous concepts we have seen could not be proven since proof requires a method of proof, they were justified. Now we have such a method.

 

The immediate answer to the question of how to know is reason and its methods. However, on their basis higher methods can be constructed. An example of such a higher-level method is the Scientific Method (as represented or unrepresentative as it may be).