RESOURCES

For more information on Epistemology, see the Epistemology-Aesthetics Study Group
Founded by Frederick C. Gibson and Alleyne Rogers

• Sensations:
  "The lower of the conscious species possess only the faculty of sensation, which is sufficient to direct their actions and provide for their needs. A sensation is produced by the automatic reaction of a sense organ to a stimulus from the outside world; it lasts for the duration of the immediate moment, as long as the stimulus lasts and no longer. Sensations are an automatic response, an automatic form of knowledge, which a consciousness can neither seek nor evade. An organism that possesses only the faculty of sensation is guided by the pleasure-pain mechanism of its body..." ["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 9; pb18]
• Reason:
  "is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses." ["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 13; pb20]
• Perception:
  "The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness: they possess the faculty of retaining sensations, which is the faculty of perception. A "perception" is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things. An animal is guided, not merely by immediate sensations, but by percepts. Its actions are not single, discrete responses to single, separate stimuli, but are directed by an integrated awareness of the perceptual reality confronting it. It is able to grasp the perceptual concretes immediately present and it is able to form automatic perceptual associations, but it can go no further." ["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 9; pb18]
• Fact:
  "Something that has really occurred or is actually the case; something certainly known to be of this character; hence, a particular truth known by actual observation or authentic testimony, as opposed to what is merely inferred, or to a conjecture or fiction; a datum of experience, as distinguished from the conclusions that may be based upon it." [OED]
• Truth:
  "Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth." [GS, FNI, 154; pb 126]
  "Truth is the identification of a fact of reality. Wheter the fact in question is metaphysical or man-made, the fact determines the truth: if the fact exists, there is no alternative in regard to what is true. For instance, the fact that the U.S. has 50 states was not metaphysically necessary -- but as long as this is men's choice, the propostion that "The U.S. has 50 states" is necessarily true. A true proposition must describe the facts as they are. In this sense, a "necessary truth" is a redundancy, and a "contingent truth" a self-contradiction." [ ITOE, 111. ]
• Knowledge:
  "a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation." [ ITOE, 45. ]
  • Science:
    "A particular branch of knowledge or study; a recognized department of learning." [OED]
    "In a more restricted sense: A branch of study which is concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified and more or less colligated by being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truth within its own domain." [OED]
    • Professor:
      "One who makes a profession of any art or science; a professional man." [OED]
    • Profession:
      "That is trained and skilled in the theoretic or scientific parts of a trade or occupation, as distinct from its merely mechanical parts; that raises his trade to the dignity of a learned profession." [OED]
      • Architect

      
      Sciences in this glossary:

    • Philosophy
      • Metaphysics
      • Epistemology
      • Ethics
      • Politics
      • Aesthetics
        • Architecture
  • Theory:
    "A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propunded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed." [OED]
  • Colligate:
    "To bind or fasten together, connect." [OED]