The Nature of Rationality

This essay examines the relationship of cognition to Objectivism's view of rationality and reason.  I studied three reference books on Objectivism; Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, The Virtue of Selfishness, and The Romantic Manifesto, all written by Ayn Rand.  In many respects, this essay is combination cognitive science and philosophy of the mind.

Ayn Rand describes rationality as "the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action." (Virtue of Selfishness, 28)  These three elements, learning, values, and action, represent the core of cognitive science.

The purpose of this essay is to present the cognitive nature of rationality that explains how learning, values, and action are all parts of rationality.  However, I think that while these three elements are very important to rationality, Rand never fully describes the process and how the different aspects are intra-related.  By explaining these processes and their relationship with one another, I hope to shed a little light on other related issues, such as the foundation of values.

In order to understand what happens cognitively, we first must understand what happens within the system of the brain.  The brain receives an almost continuous stream of sensations. The brain must not only sort through all these sensations and decide which are important and which are not, but it also must learn from the resultant perceptions, and apply them to future situations.  The applications can be seen as the outputs from the brain.  In between is the processing unit that divides up this work among different sections of the brain to do everything it needs to do to keep us alive.

In our infancy, the brain has many neurons, but few connections between them.  The first few months of our life, neurons spend most of their time growing dendrites to other neurons in complex arrangements until the child starts to see patterns, to see similarities in the world around us.  We develop crude perceptions at first, that are very chaotic and mostly nonsense. As our brain grows more and more dendrites, and as useless neurons die, the baby begins to form clearer perceptions of objects.  They first observe entities.

Entities are objects in our existence that are not yet differentiated from the background.  They are our initial perceptions.  We know that something exists, an entity.  The sensations from the object create a perception in our mind.  This is the beginning of our cognition.  After we become aware of the object, we focus.  Focusing allows us to say  this entity.   It gives the object an identity.  The ability to focus may or may not be an inherent property, but it is a prerequisite for concept-formation.  Focusing is a complex phenomena that scientist know exists, but are having a hard time pinpointing.  There may even be several areas within the brain that can focus, each for different aspects of cognition.

After we gain the ability to focus on this object and give it identity, we have to do one more thing to form a concept.  We must compare this object with other objects.  This requires that we are aware of the properties of the object.  We use our short term memory to hold several perceptions in our head at once.  We omit the properties that are different (measurements), and integrate the rest into a concept.  Concept formation is not always internal (or what I call rigorous induction).  We sometimes have teachers that introduce us to new concepts and we then find examples that fit that definition (casual induction).  There are even some people that hear a concept and are shown the examples, but perform no evaluation of the concept at all (complacent induction).
 
The important thing is that we become aware of the differences in the properties between objects, and we omit those measurements to form a concept.  These measurements may be color, size, or shape, but the measurements that are still included must all be the essential elements of the concept.  Those included attributes make up the conceptual common denominator of the concept, from which we create definitions.

Rand goes on to explain the philosophic nature of definitions, axioms, and abstractions in the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, but I want to shift focus to how this learned information can be used to perform actions.  In order to get from learning to action, we need to find motivation.  From a biological standpoint, there are only two sensations that initiate motivation, pleasure and pain.  It's from these two that normative abstractions arise.
 
Pleasure is a sensation that is desired for its own sake.  Pain is a sensation that is avoided for its own sake.  These two produce a short term mental and hormonal flux within the brain. This flux can only be characterized by one's desire to continue it or cut it off.  

While pleasure and pain initiate motivation, our minds still don't have the capacity to develop  normative abstractions until we first make cognitive abstractions and understand the concept of cause and effect.  The cognitive abstractions that first develop are those of pain and pleasure.  A baby will cry in infancy every time it has a pain, whether it s hungry, messy, or abused.  It may be argued that the crying is an instinctive reaction.  But even if it is instinctive, the child does become aware of these pains, and does want to end them.

I am of course arguing that a baby is aware of pain and pleasure, even if it isn't aware of much else cognitively.  A baby can be aware of pleasure and pain because they both have the element of hormones to manifest this awareness.  It is for this reason, and it's a damn good one, that babies are aware of pain and pleasure.   Infants need to be aware of pleasure and pain even before the brain is ready cognitively to deal with them.  Our earliest concepts are that of pain and pleasure and would have to be for the child to quickly deal with the world around it.
 
After the infant is aware of pleasure and pain cognitively it next must reach the concept of cause and effect before it can act.  A baby gets hungry and starts crying from the pain.  The mother hears the crying and begins feeding the child.  The child learns, not unlike to Pavlov's dogs, that crying gets him food.  The concept is learned and remembered for future reference.  The next time he gets hungry, while the sensation is not so great as to put him in pain, he cries anyway in hopes of getting fed, so that a stronger sensation of hunger doesn't come.  The child is motivated to end the pain quickly, at first notice.

This primitive formation of normative abstractions is the beginning of our values.  As we get older and develop richer abstractions, we still value our pleasure, but not so much that it limits other aspects of our life.  But pleasure is the basis of our motivations, and hence our values, while life is our implicit goal.  As we progress with these abstractions, we find other values, such as happiness, friendship, sex, thinking, pride, and art.  Obviously not everyone reaches the same values, which is why there are such a variety of personalities and interests.  Many diverge along the path for various reasons.  But with a set of values in place, we can start formulating goals and plans to achieve those goals.  This is where creativity comes in.

Creativity is the integration of concepts, both cognitive and normative abstractions, into mental images.  This involves picturing an arbitrary unit from a concept or multiple concepts.  Art is the recreation of a normative abstraction or series of abstractions depicting the artist view of reality.  Since those concepts tend to be very personal, art has always carried a profound impact on others (many times, even on the artist himself.)  But creativity is involved in other activities besides art.  We use it to for every action, whether it's building a bridge or speaking.

The process of formulating a concrete from an abstraction takes, not only the essentials of the concept, but also the measurements that were omitted during the concept's formation.  It is impossible to add every measurement back in that was omitted, nor is it desirable.  How these measurements are re-administered demonstrate the creativity of the person.  Sometimes, the measurements are the ideal attributes and represent the ideal value.  Other times, the we use an example from reality for our mental image.  Still others, create monsters by warping the measurements in ways that no longer suit the concept.  By adding the measurements back in though, we perform the essentials for creativity.

Creativity is accomplished in the mind by holding the concept in our awareness as well as the appropriate measurements.  Since it is sometimes very difficult to hold many measurements in the brain (this is why we created the concept in the first place), our creativity is limited.  Writing, speaking, or drawing are all ways of expressing these measurements.  They also acts as a storage bin for the measurements, and as a possible feedback to the legitimacy of the measurements or the addition of others.

Our values are normative abstractions.  Our creativity gives us a way to use them.  When our creativity creates the ideal for a concept, we can perceive our goal.  Our goals are nothing more than our mental image of our normative abstractions. When I create the goal of mowing the yard, I am seeking the value of order.  When I create the goal of finishing a race, I am seeking the value of pride.  When I create the goal of happiness, I am seeking the value of life.  Each goal was created in the same way, by creativity.

How do we know when our measurement addition is accurate?  How can we know become aware of contradictions in our goal?  Deduction.  The laws of logic are the administrators of creativity.  It makes sure that nothing within the mental image contradicts itself.  Logic arises from our need to hold consistent mental images. Unfortunately, we don't always use deduction.  Our need for certainty can lie as an obstacle in front of apparent contradictions.  We choose not to apply logic so that our certainty will not be shaken.  We also choose not to apply logic because it takes time and as we grow older we don't wish to spend time re-examining everything we are certain about.  But once we are certain that our goals are consistent, its time for a plan.

A plan to action is formed by comparing and contrasting reality and our goals.  If reality is in some sort of contradiction with our goals, then we have to formulate a plan to change reality to fit.  I value money, but I don't have any.  I analyze reality and see that I have to trade with someone to obtain money.  I can either trade the products of my mind or my physical effort for money.  With this money I can buy goods to keep myself alive.  My goal is to get a job.  I next form a plan to attain that job.  Again I must compare and contrast, but this time we must focus on the differences, rather than the similarities.  The differences tell you what the plan needs to accomplish.  I want a job, but no one wants to hire me,   What do I do?   I need to find someone who wants my skills in a trade.  I need to find what skills I  have to offer and what kind of trade I wish to make (how much money).

To formulate a plan we need to be able to identify the causes that our body must perform in order to achieve the desired effect.  Not only do we have to know the cause/effect relationship that persists in reality, but we also have to know the cause/effect relationship in our own body.  What do we need to do in order to perform the action.  Infants are known to experiment with their movements to learn to control them.  They sometimes observe themselves moving, to see what they are doing.  When they first start trying to walk, they have to learn the necessary muscle movements in order to stand upright and to move their legs one in front of the other.  All of this while maintaining their balance.  Their first few attempts fail, but they learn that they need to try something different.  Once they succeed, they remember what all needs to be done in order to do it again.

Our productiveness arises from plan completion.  From plans to action requires initiative or assertiveness.  It requires taking a plan and performing the actions necessary to complete it. Action is the heart of productiveness.   Integration is the on going process of making decisions.  It is the essence of free will.  It makes sure we stay on task and focus on the appropriate goal.  It settles disputes and maintains our conscious.  Without integration, we would all eventually go insane.

The complexity of action is much greater than how I presented it here.  This article is meant as a very quick and rough overview of rationality.  As we perform an action, we learn new things and apply them to the rest of our knowledge.  We also form sub-goals in a plan or demand new information to formulate a goal.  This process is roughly circular.  It does not have a set beginning or end, except at birth and death.  As we grow, so does our knowledge and our values.  Rationality, and hence life, is a continuous process that the brain helps us to achieve.