Objectivism vs. Intrinsicism vs. Subjectivism: A Short Summary

At root, subjectivism, intrinsicism and Objectivism are theories of the nature of concepts or "universals." Here, I summarize them in regard to their view of the nature of truth and knowledge. Since truth is a quality of statements composed of concepts, each school's view of truth is a direct outgrowth of its view of concepts.

Subjectivism holds that truth, in effect, resides only in the mind. For a subjectivist, a particular statement can be true for one person and false for another. (Kant (by implication), Wittgenstein, James, Sartre, etc.) "Truth" amounts to whatever one believes, and there is no such thing as "knowledge" of reality; only some sort of "experience" inside one's own mind.

Intrinsicism holds that truth resides disembodied out in the world. Typically, intrinsicists hold that all people have to do is somehow "open their hearts to God," or "pay attention to their intuitions," or "open their minds to the light of truth," and the "external truth" will infallibly push its way in. If the truth is already "out there," then there's no reason to think that any special processing is required to reach it; one merely has to absorb it. (Plato, Aristotle (partially, in regard to essences), Apostle Paul, Augustine, etc.) For an intrinsicist, conceptual knowledge is whatever external truths one happens to have absorbed. A particular statement is "true" for everyone, whether they have any evidence or not. (And it's an arbitrarily answerable question whether various people can be held responsible for not grasping all the "floating truth" out there.) (1)

Objectivism holds that truth and falsehood are aspects of conceptual knowledge. Truth (and perceptual knowledge) is a relationship between a consciousness and reality. Truth is reality, as conceptually processed by a consciousness. Truths do not exist disembodied in external reality. Only physical entities (and their aspects--including other consciousnesses) exist in external reality. I can only reach a truth when I choose to conceptually process percepts by reasoning (by the method of logic.) For an Objectivist, a particular statement cannot be true for one person and false for another, (2) but it can be arbitrary for one person and either true or false for another. People can have different levels of evidence that change how the statement ranks on their "epistemological determinacy" scale. (From arbitrary, to possibly true or false, to probably true or false, to certainly true or false.)

There is much more to be said about this topic, and I recommend Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, by Leonard Peikoff, for more.

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(1) To be clear, most modern, intellectual intrinsicists (and many such subjectivists) go to great pains to cloak their theory of knowledge in the appearance of reasoning from observation. They use the language of natural science and the formalism of deductive arguments. But this is all rationalization, because, for intrinsicists, the ultimate basis of "knowledge" is just to "feel the [allegedly external] truth." For subjectivists, whatever their pretenses about subjectivism being necessitated by objective science, that self-contradiction wipes out objectivity on their part, and they thus imply that there's no such thing as knowledge of reality. (What distinguishes knowledge of reality from fantasy is that knowledge is objective.)

(2) So long as the statement actually has matching referents in both cases. The same words referring to different people aren't actually the same statement, because the words have different referents in each context.

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Link Highlight: Introduction to Objectivism Playlist

Here is a playlist of YouTube videos providing an introductory overview of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Please give it a like if you enjoy it:

 Introduction to Objectivism - Best Playlist

Proceeding from Axioms in Objectivism - YouTube Edition

Well, it's finally happened: The impoverished reasoning methods employed by academic philosophy have infected YouTube comments....Shocking, I know....

But, all kidding aside, when most academic philosophers (who aren't deeply acquainted with Objectivist literature and lecture courses) read about Ayn Rand's axioms, they tend to deride them as tautologies. They can't possibly imagine how you could deduce a whole philosophical system from such tautologies. Well, they have something in common with my interlocutor (mirabileamavi) in the comments of a YouTube video. Hopefully, my concise answers to him (her?) should be clarifying:

Interlocutor: ...How do you derive causation from tautologies? 

Me: The "tautologies" you speak of are axioms. If something is truly an axiom, it is too fundamental to be conceptually analyzed, but is perceptually self-evident. You need only observe reality to see that it is true. 

An entity is itself, therefore it acts as itself. This mode of action consistent with its nature is causality. See: objectivismfordeepthinkers.blogspot.com/2012/06/axio­ms-of-objectivism.html 

Int: i still dont understand how you can derive causation from tautologies. 

'john', from that i can infer 'john' is 'john' but i can't infer that 'john is a fireman' can i? the predicate 'is a fireman' is not contained in 'john'. while 'john' is 'john' is necessarily true and tautological, 'john is a fireman' certainly is not. from a=a we cannot infer that a=b. heres an example: 'frank ramsey', who is his father, what is his occupation? obvious all you can infer is that F.R. is F.R., nothing else. 

Me: At the level of bare axioms, all we can say is that, because John is John, John must act as John. That's it: causality is a corollary of identity. But to identify John as a fireman, we cannot simply deduce from the axiom. We must specifically observe firemen in order to form the concept "fireman." We must then observe John and see that he fits the concept. (Intro. to Objectivist Epistemology) Once we have observed he is a fireman, causality tells us he can't swim and lay eggs as a female squid. 

Int: 'is' is not equivalent to 'act'. 

okie, look at this from another angle. since identity is universally necessary, 2 is 2 is also an identity statement. but what does it mean to say that 2 act as 2? or for that matter, john act as john? if not just 'john is john' 

from john is john nothing else follows. not causality, not anything. let me ask you again, what casual anything can you deduce from 'frank ramsey'. thats right, nothing. 

Me: An entity's identity includes its qualities and capacities for action/reaction. We can isolate and focus on them in our thinking, by abstraction, but they cannot be separated in concrete reality. Causality is a corollary of identity, not a separately deduced fact. As a corollary, it is simply another way of looking at the same fundamental fact: an entity is itself. It's self-evident: look at reality. 

2 is a quantitative abstraction. Whatever 2 entities you are focusing on will act as themselves. 

Int: take our friend 'fr' as an example, obviously we can infer 'fr' is 'fr' via any standard of formal logic. but we can't infer 'fr' is also p. why? because additional information is needed to establish the new inference. 

to say something is corollary is to say that something follows from another. but how do you infer from 'fr' without the additional info. that 'fr' is also p? can i seriously validly infer that A, therefore B, C, D, X...? 

i.e. how am i justified in seeing arsenic for the first time to infer that it can or cannot kill? surely none of its properties follows from my visual perception of it or the mere knowing of its name. yes we can know its effects/properties through observation, but thats an additional step, not something that merely follows from our acquaintance with it. 

Me: For the last time, Objectivism doesn't say you can infer any specific properties/actions of entities from "A=A." To see that arsenic is deadly, you make specific observations of its effects. Once you have induced that arsenic is deadly, you know that once you have identified a specific sample as arsenic, it will be deadly when taken. Without causality, arsenic wouldn't have to behave as arsenic, and there's no way to know what will happen if you ingest it; it could make you live 1000 years.

So the basic point here is that, in Objectivism, proceeding from the axioms does not mean deduction, but induction. The truth of the axioms (including the validity of the senses) makes induction from observation (generalization) possible (including concept formation as a certain type of induction.)

The major model of system building in modern Western philosophy has been that of the rationalists, who deduce consequences from "a priori postulates," "intuitive" starting points, or mathematical axioms. Thus, when confronted with a philosophic system like Objectivism that claims axioms, most contemporary philosophers simply assume that the axioms are intended as a deductive starting point. They then rightly observe that nothing can be deduced from the axioms alone, and claim that Objectivism is a failure, or is not "serious" philosophy.

This is what I was referring to by "the impoverished reasoning methods employed by academic philosophy": Real induction, which is a method of generating principles, has been largely supplanted by probabilistic reasoning, which most contemporary philosophers call "induction."

The details of how induction works in various fields of knowledge is an active area of research among Objectivist philosophers. But we have cases of induction and general guidelines for how to form valid inductions left by Ayn Rand, and explicated by Leonard Peikoff. I recommend Understanding Objectivism: A Guide to Learning Ayn Rand's Philosophy by Leonard Peikoff.

The video below is not directly relevant to the above, but is an excerpt from one of Rand's essays that makes general points about philosophy, reason and emotions.

[Edited: 9-1-12]

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Related Articles:
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What Caused the Financial Crisis: It Wasn't Capitalism or Deregulation

Below are links to Yaron Brook's explanation of how the US housing bubble and financial crisis happened. Yaron Brook has an MBA, a Ph.D. in Finance, and was a professor of finance at a university.

Here is a short video on what caused the crisis: Did Capitalism Cause the Financial Crisis?

Here is a course that goes through the details of what happened and why. The video is in the center column of the page, at the top of the "Video & Audio" section: The Financial Crisis: What Happened and Why

Ayn Rand's essay: What is Capitalism? (YouTube audio)

Capitalism at The Ayn Rand Lexicon.