Reality Check
In this chapter we will examine the first two foundational ideas that give meaning to the concept of truth and the process of its discernment. In doing so, we will also identify the presupposed ideas at the base of thinking and the acquisition of knowledge, as well as all purposeful human action. It will involve dipping into metaphysics, and epistemology, the two branches at the base of philosophy. We must ask, what is reality? what is real? And, we must ask, how do we know it? how can we be sure?
We know about reality, and what is real, by using our common sense, or what Nathaniel Branden referred to as our everyday sense of reality. It’s how we function in daily life. For example, as you hold your phone you’re confident that it won’t suddenly turn into a banana, or a cup of coffee. And you know that if you drive to the shops, your car won’t transform into a pumpkin, or melt in the sunshine.
You understand that changes are possible to both phones and motor vehicles, but you know that they will always be predictable. You might drop your phone in a puddle and short-circuit the electrics, or you might crash into another vehicle and wreck your car. But you know that these changes will only happen in accordance with the specific nature of the things involved. The phone might stop working, but it won’t crystallise and turn to dust. Your car might be rendered un-driveable after a collision, but it won’t shatter into tiny pieces or morph into a boat.
You may consider these examples absurd, because you take this basic knowledge of reality for granted. But the reason for your confidence is the knowledge that things are what they are. It’s the most basic premise of your entire world view. The phone is the phone, the car is the car. Each has a specific identity, and a specific nature, and can only act in accordance with it. And it’s the same for actions, attributes, emotions, experiences etc. A feeling of anger is a feeling of anger, an act of coercion is an act of coercion. Things are what they are.
The law of identity
In philosophy this idea is called the law of identity. It’s the self-evident truth that everything is what it is, and it’s something specific, with a specific nature. Everything has particular properties that make it what it is. Everything that exists has an identity. To be, is to be something—something specific. You know this, and you implicitly demonstrate that you know it all day long, every day. This basic premise is at the very base of absolutely everything you do, because it has to be. If it were not, you couldn’t function.
The law of identity is expressed algebraically as, A is A—where A can be anything, and it is what it is. This simple and self-evident statement is the most profound observation about existence. Nothing is more fundamental, and nothing is more certain. It’s the most basic statement in the field of metaphysics, the first branch of philosophy, and study of the fundamental nature of reality.
The law of identity is the recognition that reality is independent of consciousness, that the existence and identity of a thing is not dependent on it being known, believed or recognised. Things are what they are irrespective of how we might feel about them. Facts are facts. Thoughts, intentions, wishes and beliefs cannot alter what is. To say that a thing exists objectively means that its existence doesn’t depend on it being perceived or known by a consciousness.
The law of identity is the philosophical expression of what we all know implicitly and act upon already, as the basis of human functionality. What we are doing here is making this knowledge explicit, so we can avoid contradicting ourselves by entertaining ideas that contradict it.
When you cross a busy street, you carefully avoid being hit by cars and trucks because you accept that they exist independently of your knowledge of them, or recognition of them. You know that you cannot wish them away or consider them an illusion. They are real, and they exist objectively. You necessarily act on this implicit premise because if you didn’t you would soon be dead!
The law of identity provides the certainty that reality is a consistent, stable, and predictable absolute, existing independently of your consciousness, and of any consciousness. And we can all validate it personally by examining the self-evident in our immediate surroundings. We can all observe that we cannot change the identity of anything without action. We can all observe that we cannot make water flow up hill, or fire cool things down.
Whatever mysteries we encounter, how ever baffled we may be in our inability to understand some phenomenon (whether real or claimed), we must rigidly stick to this fundamental epistemological principle. Metaphorically speaking, we mustn’t argue against the ground that we intellectually stand on by necessity.
You are the tightrope-walking truth seeker attempting to walk the epistemological wire and gain knowledge. Holding reality as an objective absolute is your balancing pole, and the basic technique of how to avoid falling (for deceptions).
The law of non-contradiction
The law of identity can be expressed in a different form. If things are what they are, then a thing can’t be what it is, and not what it is, at the same time. Something can’t exist and not exist at the same time. You cannot be late and not late at the same time. You cannot succeed and not succeed at the same time. In other words, contradictions cannot exist—another thing you already know!
So, we can restate the law of identity as the law of non-contradiction. This says that contradictions do not exist. This is the most basic observation of reality expressed in epistemological terms. It’s the fundamental principle of truth seeking and the acquisition of all knowledge. The law of identity in both these forms (simply two ways of saying the same thing) is the common root of both metaphysics and epistemology, or the bridge between the two.
The law of non-contradiction tells us that if a contradiction is noticed in our thinking—in comparing claims, theories, or ideas—one should regard it as an error flag! Contradiction alert! Further investigation will be needed to resolve the contradiction, by reference to the facts of objective reality.
The law of non-contradiction is the most basic law of logic and the fundamental principle that guides us in testing any idea or claim against reality. This is huge, because it shows us that reality is knowable—already pointing to the third of the four ideas that constitute the foundations of truth seeking. If you hear two or more contradictory claims about anything, you can find out which one correlates with reality, by subjecting them both to your process of validation. resolving the contradiction by reference to facts, and thus gaining knowledge.
The good news is that anyone who can grasp that things are objectively what they are (consciously as well as implicitly), and therefore identify a contradiction, can understand what is going on in their world. You can be confident of discerning truth in all matters, if you consciously commit yourself to being guided by this principle. It may be a long and arduous task, but there is no inherent roadblock to gaining knowledge. Knowledge is therefore fundamentally achievable, no matter your supposed level of intelligence. By observing the law of identity and the same principle in the form of the law of non-contradiction we can grasp that reality is fully knowable. We’ll discuss this further, later on. But for now, notice that mainstream philosophers would have you believe the opposite—that you cannot really know anything.
The law of non-contradiction also shows us that logic and existence are inseparable. Existence implies and necessitates logic. Nothing can exist without an identity. The thing and its identity are inseparable in reality, and in human consciousness. Existence is identity.
As Rand concluded, logic is thus the art of non-contradictory identification. Logic is the basic method of thinking, and it rests on (or presupposes) the law of identity.
Law of causality
The law of causality is also implied and necessitated by the law of identity. Aristotle called it the law of identity applied to action. A thing of a specific nature—with a particular identity—can only act in accordance with its nature. So, in any given context what a thing will do, is determined by what it is. An acorn has the potential to become an oak tree, a stone doesn’t. A bird can fly, but a bus station can’t.
In his lectures in the 1960s, Nathaniel Branden pointed out that at a particular temperature, wood burns; at the same temperature iron expands, and at the same temperature water boils. Causality proceeds from identity. Another way of looking at this is to consider that when a bicycle collides with a car, the bicycle is hurled into the air, not the car. But when a car collides with a train, its the car that is hurled into the air, not the train. A thing can only act in accordance with its nature. Causality proceeds from identity.
Law of excluded middle
The law of excluded middle is yet a third way of expressing the law of identity. It states that there is no middle ground between existence and non-existence. A tree is either a tree, or it is not a tree. A man is either in Timbuktu, or he is not in Timbuktu. An action either succeeds, or it does not succeed.
Again, this idea is self-evident, and thus requires no proof. It can be expressed as, everything is either A or non A. But note that it does NOT mean that everything is either A or B. Something is either this identity, or NOT this identity, without specifying any other kind of identity.
The Irrefutable Primacy of Existence
The laws of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle, are inseparable because they all imply and necessitate each other, and they are logically irrefutable. All arguments, claims, statements, propositions or assertions presuppose and depend on their validity, but more than this, all thought and reasoning, all knowledge, presupposes them. More that this! All purposeful human action presupposes them!
In other words, we all know them implicitly and act on them in absolutely everything we do, only without explicit knowledge of them in the terms I have explained. You might wonder why anyone would want to try and argue against them, yet modern philosophers vehemently do. But the more important point in this context is that many ideas that are held as true by people who might call themselves truth seekers, rest implicitly on their rejection! In other words people are epistemologically unaware of the implications of some of the ideas that they hold to be true. For example, ‘we create our own reality’, or, ‘we are all one’.
Consider a basic action you perform all the time, walking through a doorway from one space into another. In this simple task, without any conscious awareness of the ideas themselves, we all demonstrate that we are presupposing the law of identity, the law of causality, and the law of non-contradiction.
As we approach the door we grasp its identity (as a door), and distinguish it from the surrounding wall structure. We treat the door as the door, and the wall as the wall, and we pass through the door, we do not attempt to pass through the wall! Thus, we demonstrate acceptance that causality proceeds from identity. In other words, that what a thing will do, depends on what it is. We also demonstrate our use of, and reliance on, logic. We demonstrate the knowledge that if we wish to be in that space through the door, we cannot (at the same time) remain in this space, this side of the door. In other words, we demonstrate that we are operating according to logic, and on the assumption that contradictions cannot exist.
Furthermore, we demonstrate our acknowledgment that our consciousness alone is insufficient to change the identity of the door from closed, to open, so that we can pass through it. We also demonstrate our acknowledgment that our consciousness alone is insufficient to change the identity of our location, from here, to there, without performing action. In total, we reveal that we are acting on the presupposition that reality is separate from our consciousness, existing independently from us, as an objective absolute that is stable, predictable, and knowable by means of logic.
It is also important to note that any attempt to deny the law of identity, and its restatement in the law of non-contradiction, as well as its application to action in the form of the law of causality, always end up reaffirming them. In attempting to refute them, you would begin by assuming that the listener is separate from you, and independent, not a creation of your imagination, and therefore objectively real. You would also have to use the objective method of language to communicate the argument. You would intend your argument to be something, to be what it is. You would intend it to mean what it means, and not the opposite. Thus, if you try and argue against these three basic principles you will always find yourself using them. Metaphorically speaking, if you try and cut this branch off, you will always find that you are standing on it.
I respectfully suggest that if you find yourself believing in ideas such as ‘we create our own reality’ you should notice that you have picked up Plato’s idea, resurrected by Kant, and enthusiastically disseminated by deceptive mainstream philosophers; you have picked up this idea because it has arrived into films, plays, songs, videos, and many other forms within your culture. It has appeared in ‘New Age’ spirituality, and is repeated by the many gurus who preach the ‘law of attraction’ in various forms. It is championed by theoretical physicists who cite the double slit experiments, and who claim implicitly that reality exists in mathematics. They can prove that 1 = zero, and thus, they claim that contradictions can exist. But you have not yet exposed such ideas to a proper process of validation, and until now, you have not been aware that the idea is demonstrably false, because it contradicts your mode of functioning. If you have grasped that there are lies in the mainstream narrative, that are deliberate attempts to mislead the public into accepting false ideas as true for political ends, you should extend this presumption down to the fundamental philosophical level. If you are interested in discerning truth consistently, you should question the superficially appealing ideas that, in fact, undermine the basis of your functionality, that undermine the concepts of truth and knowledge, and that undermine any prospects of political freedom and therefore human flourishment.
Together, the laws of identity, non-contradiction and causality, are the basic principles of all rational thought and the base of all knowledge. They are universal, and axiomatic. Strictly speaking they are not axioms but are corollaries of the three basic axioms of existence, identity and consciousness.
An axiom is something that is fundamental, primary, and self-evident in a given science. The axioms of consciousness, existence and identity are fundamental primaries to all human thinking, and any and all claims to knowledge. They do not have to be proven; they are the self-evident foundations on which the concept of proof rests. Proof is one form of validation, self-evidence is the more fundamental form. Proof is used as a means of validation when it is impractical, or impossible, to present the self-evident. Proof is a process of inference, of demonstrating that something must logically follow from some other previous knowledge. If there were no previous self-evident knowledge, there would be no base from which to infer anything, and the concept of proof would be meaningless.
To demand that the axiom of identity be proven is to be unaware of what I have just explained, due to being unaware of the hierarchical structure of knowledge (see chapter 20). The concept of proof is higher up the structure than the necessary base it rests upon—the law of identity, the self-evident. One has to accept that self-evident knowledge exists for the concept of proof to have meaning. What other prior knowledge could you possibly appeal to in order to prove that something exists? All you can do is produce the thing, appealing to the self-evident. It’s similar with consciousness and identity. The axiom of consciousness doesn’t have to be proven, it’s a given. Existence exists, and consciousness is conscious. These two axioms are implicit in every human action or statement or claim of knowledge. On the other hand, trying to understand the mystery of how consciousness works, or how it came to be, is an entirely different matter.
The important point is that we must start the process of knowledge acquisition by accepting that existence exists, and that consciousness is conscious. And that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving what exists. It is NOT appropriate to start the process of knowledge acquisition with questions such as, how can we explain consciousness? Or, how did existence come to be? It is doubly important NOT to begin the quest for the acquisition of knowledge by asking questions that implicitly undermine both the concept of knowledge itself, and at the same time, the means to acquire it! These are the epistemological basics if we are to become competent and credible thinkers and communicators free of self-contradiction in our reasoning.
It is by grasping and using these basic principles (the laws of identity, non-contradiction, and causality) that man has been able to gather knowledge of reality. It was only when these principles were grasped and explicitly held by men that the scientific and industrial revolutions became possible. It is only by using these principles that people were able to invent internal combustion engines, suspension bridges and aeroplanes. These principles are why our computers work; they are how we are able to grow food, how we construct dams and irrigation systems, telescopes and microscopes; they are the basis of all genuine scientific method and of any and all claims of knowledge. That is why these principles must consistently be the fully conscious basis of your pursuit of truth.
In so far as our thinking is in accordance with these principles it is in accordance with reality. To the extent that it is not, it is not. These three laws are the fundamentals of our means to knowing reality, to distinguishing between what is real and what is not, and thus, to discerning truth.
Given the MASSIVE importance of these principles, you would rightly expect them to be taught in schools, and knowledge of them to be universal, especially since the renaissance happened several hundred years ago in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But sadly, sophists and propagandists, in the guise of mainstream schools of philosophy, have been explicitly and implicitly denying these laws for the past two centuries. Cunningly disputing, obfuscating, and twisting, until clarity and understanding are both lost. One can understand the dominance of the mystical view prior to the obvious success of making these principles explicit in men’s thinking, as shown by the scientific and industrial revolutions that brought humanity out of the dark ages and into modernity. But to deny that reality is an objective absolute and fully knowable to the human mind post scientific and industrial revolutions, can only be disingenuous. It is inconceivable that philosophers could have watched the post-renaissance explosion of inventions and innovations, and witnessed men of genius appearing in so many fields of study, and conclude that reality is unknowable to the human mind! Yet this is precisely what has happened. And these false ideas continue to be espoused by mainstream philosophers today, in spite of the incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
The law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, and the law of causality, are undeniably the philosophical bedrock on which the concept of truth stands. They serve as our guide to knowing reality whether we are dealing with what is immediately in front of our eyes, or dealing with abstract conceptual ideas that are distant from our daily experience in space and time. In other words, they guide us in all of our pursuits, whether we are making a cup of tea, theorising on social structures, or deciding if there is a god.
Because we act on these principles implicitly all day long, most of us buy into them and recognise their self-evident nature. We generally consider facts to be facts, independent of desires, wishes and whims, and we accept that actions have consequences and, usually, we act accordingly—if not all the time. To the extent that you are a functional man or woman, you are acting on the presupposition that reality is an objective absolute, and that you are fully capable to know it using your faculty of reason. To the extent that you ‘believe’ that reality is a construct of human consciousness, or that it is unknowable, is the extent to which your mind is divided against itself. More on this in chapter 6, where I discuss how our human form of consciousness works in serving us with knowledge of both our immediate environment, as well as the conceptual world beyond.
Summary
To know truth, is to know reality. And if we go back to the basics we can see that reality is real, and that we can know it. We all function, all day every day, on these premises. Be conscious of them, and hold them explicitly if you wish to discern truth, and therefore gain genuine knowledge. Hold them explicitly if you wish to be able to effectively campaign for freedom and human flourishment without self-contradiction.
Note that these principles cannot be proven, and they don’t need to be. They are the basis of proof. It can be demonstrated that they are assumed in all thought and any successful action, and it can be demonstrated that their opposites are false. The point is that this demonstration is the more fundamental indication of truth or falsity.
The law of identity states that things are what they are, A is A.
The law of noncontradiction states that contradictions cannot exist.
The law of causality states that causality proceeds from identity.
On the other hand, the idea that consciousness creates reality in the metaphysical sense, Plato’s primacy of consciousness, is false. Your mind has enormous power to create your particular experience of objective reality, and to reshape matter in the creation of your values, as we shall explore in chapter 7, but it has no power to alter the objective facts of reality.
Chapter 5 – The Standard of Truth
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