CLOSING REMARKS ON EPISTEMOLOGY
Contents:
This is an explicit link between epistemology and ethics
In ethics, I show that one’s own life is the standard of value, i.e. the highest value and the source of all values (see: The Standard of Value from Ethics). Now, however, I shall show the same idea from an epistemological perspective. I shall show that the only purpose fundamentally is the purpose of staying in existence as what you are, and since that any form of cognition needs purpose, I shall show that knowledge implies and is implied by the idea of one’s own life as the standard of value.
How do you grasp the self-evident? By staying in awareness. Why grasp the self-evident? To stay in existence as a conscious being, i.e. to preserve your faculty of awareness, because to be aware is to be aware of something that is what it is. Why grasp anything beyond the self-evident? To stay in existence as a volitional being, i.e. to preserve your faculty of self-driven awareness. If you do not care to do so, why think? For no purpose? But thinking is impossible without purpose (see: “Unpurposeful abstraction fallacy” from Contextual Clarity). So, do you think for a purpose of something or someone beyond you? But if the purpose is beyond you, your awareness cannot be self-driven because what drives you is also beyond you.
But you are what you are and cannot be what you are not. Thus, the moment you lose the capacity to be self-driven, you no longer exist. But can you or what remains of you at least be aware? Well, do you act to stay in awareness as long as you are awake? If so, that is your purpose. But if the purpose is still beyond you, you can have no purpose since no purpose you act upon arises from you. You no longer exist. Thus, the only purpose is to preserve yourself as you are, i.e. as a being of self-driven awareness, i.e. as a being alive, aware and desirous of being both. If such is not your purpose, you cannot think, you cannot be aware and ultimately, you cannot exist. To the extent that you have such purpose, to that extent you are aware and care to exist, and to the extent that you do not, to that extent you give up your awareness and let yourself fade away.
NOTE: Thinking is ultimately based on thinking about something that exists, i.e. thinking about reality. To think about the unreal from the very first thought is to think about nothing. Hence, the first thoughts you have must be forms of knowledge.
Rationality is the self-driven effort to grasp reality and act accordingly, i.e. it is the self-driven effort to know and to act on what one knows. Hence, rationality is the virtue of choosing to stay in existence as what you are, i.e. as a volitional being. Hence, it is the virtue that is the source of every other virtue, since it strives toward the purpose that is the source of every other purpose. Hence, every virtue is a form of rationality, since every purpose is a form of staying in existence as what you are.
If you care to exist, you must grasp reality to your fullest, exercise your awareness of reality and integrate it to know what you aware of. If you do not, you have bid yourself farewell.
The purpose of the concept of “rationality” is to orient one’s mind toward reality. Hence, “rationality” is defined in the context of one’s knowledge, capacity to focus, capacity to integrate, other mental and physical capacities, conditions that affect the aforementioned capacities, etc. No one can act beyond their capacity, so there is no purpose in defining a mental orientation that disregards capacity, i.e. that does not consider what is possible or impossible to the actor in question. Furthermore, though the pursuit of life and happiness is the fundamental pursuit of any rational person (as shown in ethics), the expression and expansion of this broad pursuit depends on the context of the person’s life, which consists of the person’s capacities, personal experiences, internalised premises and habits, etc., which together lead to a concretised hierarchy of values with respect to which one’s cognitive purposes exist, with respect to which reason is exercised.
Hence, rationality is contextual, i.e. it is the application of universal truths and principles to the particular facts within a given factual context. Hence, a person with low intelligence and a person with high intelligence both have the same capacity to be rational, i.e. both have the capacity to choose to focus their mind toward reality to their own best mental capacity; as long as one is a volitional being, mental capacity as such (i.e. the integrative power, scope of focus, etc.) is irrelevant to rationality, i.e. it does not make one more or less rational. Rationality is not about how much or how far you use your mind, but simply how you use your mind, i.e. by what principles; reality-oriented and thereby life-affirming, or evasive and thereby life-degrading? Hence, in an essential way, rationality is the affirmation of one’s own life to one’s fullest capacity.
NOTE: Do not confuse “contextual” with “subjective”. “Contextual” only refers to a particular set of interrelated facts by which something can be understood and applied. “Subjective” on the other hand refers to treating conscious units (e.g. emotions, whims, intuition, unvalidated notions, etc.) as valid “knowledge” apart from or even in contradiction to its relationship to known facts.
Illustrative examples:
1.
In an emergency, it is rational to use instincts to act if it is clear that any deliberation is practically impossible and/or potentially detrimental to your ability to deal with the emergency. Here, it is perfectly rational to use your instincts and intuition, since such situations (where rapid and therefore largely automatic evaluation and responses are needed) are exactly where the faculties of instinct and intuition are relevant. Hence, rationality demands the use of instinct and intuition in the right situations.
2.
In the pursuit of pleasure in the moment, it is rational to act on emotion within the context if doing otherwise would take away from the pleasure you rationally decided to seek. Pleasure is in fact an important value in human life, and disregarding or degrading the means of gaining pleasure based on arbitrary deliberation is irrational.
3.
An ordinary rational person cannot be expected to validate first-hand every finding in specialised studies and sciences, such as medicine, psychology, economics, the natural sciences or even philosophy beyond a certain point. In such a case, since rationality demands relevance and efficiency, it is not necessarily rational to try to achieve enough first-hand knowledge about the specialised study or science to validate the findings in question. On the contrary, it is often perfectly rational to use indirect evidence such as cross-references, expert consultation, reputation, etc. A rational person’s judgement is still his own independent judgement, but the method of reaching the judgement is not and cannot be through direct study.
To be a volitional being to the fullest is equivalent to being rational to the fullest. Why? Reason is the use of volition from the perceptual level (the last inexorably non-volitional stage of cognition) to focus based on (1) awareness of motives and (2) awareness of facts. It is the faculty that is based on, relies on and most uses the faculty of volition. To have as a fundamental approach either impulsivity or instinctiveness is to not exercise your volition in favour of automatic, subconscious or unconscious drives.
Thus, to be volitional to the full is to be rational to the full and vice versa.
NOTE: Needless to say, not all volitional acts are rational, but I posit that they are not rational when they are evasive on a deeper level, i.e. when they involve the unfocusing of the mind from reality and rely at their core on blind (i.e. non-perceptual) automatic responses. Hence, being a volitional being is equivalent to being rational if and only if one exercises one’s volition to one’s fullest capacity for every level of cognition beyond the perceptual level.
Let me first define my terms. Reason is the faculty of identifying and integrating the material given by direct experience; “integrating” is the key word, since that takes us from direct perception and instinct (which are immediate or short-range) to deeper, broader and more long-range understanding of the world (via abstraction, concepts and generalisations). Integration is what separates reason from mere perception and mere instinct (I say “mere” because (1) reason is based on direct perception but extends beyond it and (2) reason can integrate intuition and instinct but, of course, it has a lot more to it).
Now, integration beyond perception and basic concepts is not automatic and needs selective, self-directed focus, i.e. volition. Most wild animals are instinctual and short-range; most do not possess the power of volition (though I think some may possess it). We humans do possess it, which is why humans can be rational while most animals cannot. But note that volition is not automatic, which means rationality is not automatic; we must choose to be rational, but we can also choose otherwise (and many do). But it is the capacity for reason that separates us from other (or at least most other) animals. But note that irrationality can only be identified as the negation of rationality, which means rationality is causally and conceptually prior; in other words, irrationality is the failure to use the distinctively human capacity to reason. That’s why I hold the capacity to be rational as the essence of being human rather than the capacity to be irrational.
Do humans not do many things not contributing to their survival, unlike animals?
Here, we have to note two things: (1) Humans are volitional beings, which means they can only function as volitional beings by integrating the actual with the potential (i.e. by being long-range in some way). Hence, our needs for survival as volitional beings are much more complex than mere biological needs. Take some examples. Art is a need of our consciousness to be able to concretise and reinforce our broad view of the world and of life. Enjoyment is a vital need since it concretises our value for life in the moment. Curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake are tied to long-range survival (if pursued rationally), since dealing with a broader more long-range context needs at least some exploration beyond what we know to be relevant. (2) Humans can choose to be irrational, which means they can refuse to integrate their values, motives and actions toward their long-range survival. Such people would indeed do a lot of things that don’t make sense and that do not contribute to their survival, but such a state of affairs is not inherent in being human.
For an excellent deep-dive into epistemology, check “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” by Ayn Rand. In this book, the author discusses concept-formation, abstractions, concepts of consciousness, definitions and more.