The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 19

Immorality. See Evil.

Implicit Knowledge. Axiomatic concepts identify explicitly what is merely implicit in the consciousness of an infant or of an animal. (Implicit knowledge is pa.s.sively held material which, to be grasped, requires a special focus and process of consciousness-a process which an infant learns to perform eventually, but which an animal's consciousness is unable to perform.) [ITOE, 76.].

Man grasps [the concept of "existent"] implicitly on the perceptual level-i.e., he grasps the const.i.tuents of the concept "existent," the data which are later to be integrated by that concept. It is this implicit knowledge that permits his consciousness to develop further.

[Ibid., 6.]

That which is merely implicit is not in men's conscious control; they can lose it by means of other implications, without knowing what it is that they are losing or when or why.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 62; pb 53.]

See also CONCEPTS; EXISTENT: KNOWLEDGE; PERCEPTION,- UNIT.

Important. See Metaphysical Value-Judgments.

Inalienability. When we say that we hold individual rights to be inalienable, we must mean just that. Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate-not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.

You cannot say that "man has inalienable rights except in cold weather and on every second Tuesday," just as you cannot say that "man has inalienable rights except in an emergency," or "man's rights cannot be violated except for a good purpose."

Either man's rights are inalienable, or they are not. You cannot say a thing such as "semi-inalienable" and consider yourself either honest or sane. When you begin making conditions, reservations and exceptions, you admit that there is something or someone above man's rights, who may violate them at his discretion. Who? Why, society-that is, the Collective. For what reason? For the good of the Collective. Who decides when rights should be violated? The Collective. If this is what you believe, move over to the side where you belong and admit that you are a Collectivist.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 12.]

See also ABSOLUTES; COLLECTIVISM; COMPROMISE; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: PRINCIPLES.

Independence. Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it-that no subst.i.tute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life-that the vilest form of self-abas.e.m.e.nt and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his a.s.sertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

[GS, FNI, 157; pb 128.]

No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth-and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man's mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.

[Ibid., 134; pb 126.]

Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience-that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible-that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. In place of your dream of an omniscient automaton, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.

[Ibid., 224; pb 178.]

[An] error is committed by the man who declares that since man must be guided by his own independent judgment, any action he chooses to take is moral if he chooses it. One's own independent judgment is the means by which one must choose one's actions, but it is not a moral criterion nor a moral validation: only reference to a demonstrable principle can validate one's choices.

["Introduction," VOS xiv; pb x.]

See also CREATORS; INTEGRITY; RATIONALITY; SFCOND-HANDERS; SELFISHNESS; VIRTUE.

Individual Rights. A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action-which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) The concept of a "right" pertains only to action-specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive-of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.

The right to life is the source of all rights-and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

["Man's Rights," VOS, 124; pb 93. "Rights" are a moral concept-the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual's actions to the principles guiding his relations.h.i.+p with others-the concept that preserves and protects inetividual morality in a social context-the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the meansof subordinating society to moral law.

[Ibid., ) 122; pb 92.]

Man holds these rights, not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective-as a barrier which the Collective cannot cross; ... these rights are man's protection against all other men.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 5.]

The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of ident.i.ty. A is A-and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man's rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.

[GS, FNI, 229; pb 182.]

Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man's survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don't. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 17.]

Individual rights is the only proper principle of human coexistence, because it rests on man's nature, i.e., the nature and requirements of a conceptual consciousness. Man gains enormous values from dealing with other men; living in a human society is his proper way of life-but only on certain conditions. Man is not a lone wolf and he is not a social animal. He is a contractual animal. He has to plan his life long-range, make his own choices, and deal with other men by voluntary agreement (and he has to be able to rely on their observance of the agreements they entered).

["A Nation's Unity," ARL, II, 2, 3.]

A right is the sanction of independent action. A right is that which can be exercised without anyone's permission.

If you exist only because society permits you to exist-you have no right to your own life. A permission can be revoked at any time.

If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.

Do not make the mistake, at this point, of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer's permission. He does not hold it by permission-but by contract that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job. A slave cannot.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 5.]

The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what const.i.tutes his own private, personal, individual happiness and to work for its achievement, so long as he respects the same right in others. It means that Man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of another man nor of any number of other men. It means that the collective cannot decide what is to be the pur pose of a man's existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness.

[ lbid.,]

Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another.

For instance: a man has the right to live, but he has no right to take the life of another. He has the right to be free, but no right to enslave another. He has the right to choose his own happiness, but no right to decide that his happiness lies in the misery (or murder or robbery or enslavement) of another. The very right upon which he acts defines the same right of another man, and serves as a guide to tell him what he may or may not do.

[Ibid., 6.]

It is not society, nor any social right, that forbids you to kill-but the inalienable individual right of another man to live, This is not a "compromise" between two rights-but a line of division that preserves both rights untouched. The division is not derived from an edict of society-but from your own inalienable individual right. The definition of this limit is not set arbitrarily by society-but is implicit in the definition of your own right.

Within the sphere of your own rights, your freedom is absolute.

[Ibid., 7.]

A right cannot be violated except by physical force. One man cannot deprive another of his life, nor enslave him, nor forbid him to pursue his happiness, except by using force against him. Whenever a man is made to act without his own free, personal, individual, voluntary consent -his right has been violated.

Therefore, we can draw a clear-cut division between the rights of one man and those of another. It is an objective division-not subject to differences of opinion, nor to majority decision, nor to the arbitrary decree of society. No man has the right to initiate the useof physical force against another man.

[ Ibid., 6.]

There is no such thing as "a right to a job"-there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man's right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no "right to a home," only the right of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no "rights to a 'fair' wage or a 'fair' price" if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product. There are no "rights of consumers" to milk, shoes, movies or champagne if no producers choose to manufacture such items (there is only the right to manufacture them oneself). There are no "rights" of special groups, there are no "rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn." There are only the Rights of Man-rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals.

["Man's Rights," VOS, 130; pb 97.]

If some men are ent.i.tled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as "the right to enslave."

[Ibid., 129; pb 96.]

The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.

["The Cas.h.i.+ng-In: The Student 'Rebellion,' " CUI, 256.]

Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression "individual rights" is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression "collective rights" is a contradiction in terms.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 136; pb 101.]

A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or a.s.sociations.

[Ibid., 137; pb 102.]

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

[Ibid., 140; pb 104.]

When individual rights are abrogated, there is no way to determine who is ent.i.tled to what; there is no way to determine the justice of anyone's claims, desires, or interests. The criterion, therefore, reverts to the tribal concept of: one's wishes are limited only by the power of one's gang. In order to survive under such a system, men have no choice but to fear, hate, and destroy one another; it is a system of underground plotting, of secret conspiracies, of deals, favors, betrayals, and sudden, b.l.o.o.d.y coups.

["The Roots of War," CUI, 37.]

One of the notions used by all sides to justify the draft, is that "rights impose obligations. Obligations, to whom?-and imposed, by whom? Ideologically, that notion is worse than the evil it attempts to justify: it implies that rights are a gift from the state, and that a man has to buy them by offering something (his life) in return. Logically, that notion is a contradiction: since the only proper function of a government is to protect man's rights, it cannot claim t.i.tle to his life in exchange for that protection.

The only "obligation" involved in individual rights is an obligation imposed, not by the state, but by the nature of reality (i.e., by the law of ident.i.ty): consistency, which, in this case, means the obligation to respect the rights of others, if one wishes one's own rights to be recognized and protected.

["The Wreckage of the Consensus," CUI, 227.]

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

["Of Living Death," TO, Oct. 1968, 6.]

The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully-and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives-the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.

["A Nation's Unity," ARL, II,2,3.]

See also AMERICA; CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; FREEDOM; HUMAN RIGHTS and PROPERTY RIGHTS; INALIENABILITY; INDIVIDUALISM; LIFE, RIGHT to; PERMISSION (vs. RIGHTS); PHYSICAL FORCE; POLITICS; PRINCIPLES; PROPERTY RIGHTS; PURSUIT of HAPPINESS, RIGHT to; RETALIATORY FORCE; SELF-DEFENSE; STATISM; TYRANNY.

Individualism. Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign ent.i.ty who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of a.s.sociation, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights-and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.

["Racism," VOS, 176; pb 129.]

Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: "I'll do as I please at everybody else's expense." An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man-his own and those of others.

An individualist is a man who says: "I will not run anyone's life-nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave.will not sacrifice myself to anyone-nor sacrifice anyone to myself."

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 6.]

The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act-the process of reason-must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival.

["The Soul of an Individualist," FNI, 91; pb 78.]

Mankind is not an ent.i.ty, an organism, or a coral bush. The ent.i.ty involved in production and trade is man. It is with the study of man- not of the loose aggregate known as a "community"-that any science of the humanities has to begin....

A great deal may be learned about society by studying man; but this process cannot be reversed: nothing can be learned about man by studying society-by studying the inter-relations.h.i.+ps of ent.i.ties one has never identified or defined.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 15.]

See also CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; "COMMON GOOD"; COOPERATION; FREE WILL; FREEDOM; INDEPENDENCE; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH; REASON; SACRIFICE; SELFISHNESS; SOCIAL SYSTEM; SOCIETY.

Induction and Deduction. The process of forming and applying concepts contains the essential pattern of two fundamental methods of cognition: induction and deduction.

The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction.

[ITOE, 36.].

See also CONCEPT-FORMATION; LOGIC; PROPOSITIONS; RATIONALISM vs. EMPIRICISM.

Infinity. There is a use of [the concept) "infinity" which is valid, as Aristotle observed, and that is the mathematical use. It is valid only when used to indicate a potentiality, never an actuality. Take the number series as an example. You can say it is infinite in the sense that, no matter how many numbers you count, there is always another number. You can always keep on counting; there's no end. In that sense it is infinite-as a potential. But notice that, actually, however many numbers you count, wherever you stop, you only reached that point, you only got so far.... That's Aristotle's point that the actual is always finite. Infinity exists only in the form of the ability of certain series to be extended indefinitely; but however much they are extended, in actual fact, wherever you stop it is finite.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 3.]

An arithmetical sequence extends into infinity, without implying that infinity actually exists; such extension means only that whatever number of units does exist, it is to be included in the same sequence.

[ITOE, 22.].

Every unit of length, no matter how small, has some specific extension; every unit of time,' no matter how small, has some specific duration. The idea of an infinitely small amount of length or temporal duration has validity only as a mathematical device useful for making certain calculations, not as a description of components of reality. Reality does not contain either points or instants (in the mathematical sense). By a.n.a.logy: the average family has 2.2 children, but no actual family has 2.2 children; the "average family" exists only as a mathematical device.

[Harry Binsw.a.n.ger, "Q & A Department: Ident.i.ty and Motion," TOF, Dec. 1981, 13.]

See also IDENt.i.tY; MATHEMATICS; NUMBERS; UNIVERSE.

Inflation. "Inflation" is defined in the dictionary as "undue expansion or increase of the currency of a country, esp. by the issuing of paper money not redeemable in specie" (Random House Dictionary). It is interesting to note that the word "inflated" is defined as "distended with air or gas; swollen."