Speaking of z10 and Prince Spinoza I wanted to get your views on self evident truths. When I was younger I got into Objectivism the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I think it's seen as pop philosophy by serious students, but I think that her arguments regarding self-evident truths was... true.
Here's a good synopsis from Wikipedia...
Rand's philosophy begins with three axioms: existence, identity, and consciousness.[5] Rand defined an axiom as "a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it."[6]
As Leonard Peikoff noted, Rand's argument for axioms "is not a proof that the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity are true. It is proof that they are axioms, that they are at the base of knowledge and thus inescapable."[7]
Rand held that existence is the perceptually self-evident fact at the base of all other knowledge, i.e., that "existence exists." She further held that to be is to be something, that "existence is identity." That is, to be is to be "an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes." That which has no nature or attributes does not and cannot exist. The axiom of existence is grasped in differentiating something from nothing, while the law of identity is grasped in differentiating one thing from another, i.e., one's first awareness of the law of non-contradiction, another crucial base for the rest of knowledge. As Rand wrote, "A leaf ... cannot be all red and green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time... A is A."[8]
Rand argues that consciousness, "the faculty of perceiving that which exists," is an inherently relational phenomenon. As she puts it, "to be conscious is to be conscious of something," that is consciousness itself cannot be distinguished or grasped except in relation to an independent reality.[9] "It cannot be aware only of itself—there is no 'itself' until it is aware of something."[10] Thus, Objectivism holds that the mind does not create reality, but rather, it is a means of discovering reality.[11]
Expressed differently, existence has "primacy" over consciousness which must conform to it. Any other approach Rand termed "the primacy of consciousness," including any variant of metaphysical subjectivism or theism.[12]
Objectivist philosophy derives its explanations of action and causation from the axiom of identity, calling causation "the law of identity applied to action."[13] According to Rand, it is entities that act, and every action is the action of an entity. The way entities act is caused by the specific nature (or "identity") of those entities; if they were different they would act differently. As with the other axioms, an implicit understanding of causation is derived from one's primary observations of causal connections among entities even before it is verbally identified, and serves as the basis of further knowledge.[14]
What do you guys think?
I later read it's a rehash of Aristotle, is that true?
Topic: Evidence