The Metaphysical versus the Epistemological as Applied to Consciousness

In Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts (chap. 1, 2), influenced by Aristotle’s fundamental premise of the primacy of existence, Rand makes an important distinction between the metaphysical and the epistemological.
 
Metaphysics, in contrast to the special sciences, studies all of existence—reality, the universe as a whole. This includes consciousness, which is a natural, not supernatural, part of existence that is an attribute of many higher level animals, especially human beings.
 
Epistemology studies the fundamental nature of human consciousness, the mental processes by which we know, or attempt to know, existence. Rand identifies (chap. 6) the two primary, self-evident concepts of existence and consciousness—self-evident in the Aristotelian sense that they are implicitly known in every act of awareness and thus cannot be denied without having to be accepted in the process of denial. Hence, such denials are self-contradictions. She calls these two primaries axiomatic concepts.*
 
When Rand uses the words “metaphysics” and “epistemology” as describing adjectives, such as metaphysical referent and epistemological essence, she is narrowing the usages to draw attention to how her theory of concepts differs from the moderate realism of Aristotle and the nominalism (arbitrary subjectivism) of today. (For example, see pp. 21, 35, and 52 in the Epistemology.)
 
The metaphysical, in its older, traditional sense, is everything that is outside of our minds—termed objective reality—and everything in or related to consciousess is termed subjective. It would be better, however, to use the term “external” as modifier of “outer” reality since consciousness is our internal—and metaphysical—reality, especially when it becomes the object of study to formulate theories of epistemology and psychology.
 
In Ayn Rand’s theory, there are metaphysical and epistemological components of consciousness.
 
In this context, the epistemological is everything our minds do—the mental processes they perform to create accurate concepts and principles, to acquire knowledge of both the external world and the internal world of consciousness, as well as to guide our choices and actions.**
 
Rand here is emphasizing the difference (165–66) between perceiver, the method of using our minds, and perceived, the facts of reality. When the processes of our minds are the objects of study, our consciousness is itself the perceiver and the processes are the perceived.
 
We are at once both observer and observed.
 
“Epistemological” as the describing adjective means, in Rand’s words, for example, the method we use “to discover a causal explanation” (230), that is, to identify the facts. “Epistemological” refers to our use of the processes and products of our minds, such as conceptualization to form the concept “table,” or, for that matter, the concept “concept.” We are being “epistemological” whether extrospecting or introspecting, and this includes the formulation of those sciences of consciousness, epistemology and psychology. The objects of study, the referents of the concept “table” and of the concept “concept” are metaphysical, as are the consciousnesses of each one of us when under study by an epistemologist or psychologist.
 
For years, if not centuries, the subject-object distinction in both philosophy and science has plagued all those who work with consciousness.
 
It is not a contradiction to say that the processes and products of our minds are the objective and metaphysical reality that both epistemology and psychology study. They are “subjective” only in the sense they are “in the subject,” the subject’s mind, as opposed to being “out there” in the external world. Consciousness is our internal reality and is our means of knowing existence—all of existence, including consciousness.
 
Epistemologists and psychologists, in effect, perform a “double duty,” of using the epistemological methods of our conscious processes to identify the metaphysical nature of those processes. “Double duty” just means scientists of the mind must introspect, as opposed to the scientists of matter who extrospect.
 
It is equivocation to say that psychology is subjective because its object of study is “in the head” and therefore not objective, that is, false, arbitrary, or unknowable.***
 
This is precisely what the Kantians and post-Kantians assert, namely that because our consciousness has a nature, we cannot know, or know with certainty, what is inside or outside of our minds. Consciousness, they say, distorts awareness of reality. How do they know that? Yes, some people’s minds distort reality, such as the ignorant and neurotic, and everyone at times makes mistakes, but the solution to this alleged problem is to follow Aristotle’s laws of logic.
 
As I have written before (65), although introspection has been effectively banned from psychology for over a century, logic is “the introspective science” (my emphasis).
 
The criteria of epistemological objectivity are Aristotle’s laws, especially the law of non-contradiction. If I say that the contents of my mind includes seeing the object on my desk as a leprechaun, not a glass of water, there is a contradiction between what I am thinking and what the actual fact is.
 
A valid theory of concepts, or universals, as it is also often referred to, must answer the question, how exactly do the products of our consciousness relate to the facts of both external and internal reality? How do we know that what is “in our heads,” epistemologically, correctly identifies what is “out there,” metaphysically.
 
And in a more complicated fashion, how do we know that what is “in here,” in our own minds, that is, its processes and products, correctly identifies what is . . . “in here”?
 
Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts holds that concepts and essential distinguishing characteristics are indeed in our minds, not “out there” in the thing, but if we correctly identify what is “out there,” and “in here,” the essences and concepts are objective in the epistemological sense, but not intrinsic or metaphysical as both Plato and Aristotle thought.
 
Historically, most philosophers have exerted considerable effort trying to find essences “out there” in the thing, but never found them, often concluding that concepts or universals are subjective, “names” only, hence the theory of nominalism.
 
That the essences are not intrinsically embedded in the things of metaphysical reality does not mean that they do not or cannot have a valid existence elsewhere, epistemologically, in our minds. We are not condemned to skepticism, or to Kant’s and the positivists’ complacent skepticism.
 
Indeed, any doctrine of skepticism is self-contradictory, because its proponents, in effect, and often explicitly, say, “We know that we know nothing,” which is absurd. And the statements of the complacent skeptics—"we don’t need complete certainty to live our lives”—are equally absurd. The concepts of probability and uncertainty presuppose certainty as much as and in the same way as the concept orphan presupposes parent. Rand calls this the stolen concept fallacy.
 
To sum up, the metaphysical refers to existence, which includes the processes and products of consciousness. The epistemological refers to consciousness as an active processor, both extrospectively and introspectively, guided by Aristotelian logic, that correctly (or incorrectly) identifies the reality of the “out there” and the “in here.”
 
 
* Identity is a third axiomatic concept, which Rand points out is a corollary of existence.
 
** Rand sometimes substitutes the word “psychological” for “epistemological,” especially when talking about concepts of consciousness (chap. 4 in the Epistemology; see also p. 256.)
 
*** Note the two meanings of the word “objective” as Rand uses it: the metaphysical referents of existence, the outer physical world and the inner mental world, and the epistemological essences we identify to formulate objective truth and knowledge. If our concepts and essences—as well as our values—are true, they are epistemologically objective. Only if arbitrary or false would it be correct to call them subjective.