Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology

The philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905–1982) is a cultural phenomenon. Her books have sold more than twenty-eight million copies, and countless individuals speak of her writings as having significantly influenced their lives. Despite her popularity, Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism has received little serious attention from academic philosophers.

Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge offers scholarly analysis of key elements of Ayn Rand’s radically new approach to epistemology. The four essays, by contributors intimately familiar with this area of her work, discuss Rand’s theory of concepts—including its new account of abstraction and essence—and its central role in her epistemology; how that view leads to a distinctive conception of the justification of knowledge; her realist account of perceptual awareness and its role in the acquisition of knowledge; and finally, the implications of that theory for understanding the growth of scientific knowledge. The volume concludes with critical commentary on the essays by distinguished philosophers with differing philosophical viewpoints and the author’s responses to those commentaries.

This is the second book published in Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies, which was developed in conjunction with the Ayn Rand Society to offer a fuller scholarly understanding of this highly original and influential thinker. The Ayn Rand Society, an affiliated group of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, seeks to foster scholarly study by philosophers of the philosophical thought and writings of Ayn Rand. 

Allan Gotthelf (1942–2013) was visiting professor of the?history?and?philosophy of science?at the?University of Pittsburgh from 2003 to 2012 and Anthem Foundation Distinguished Fellow for Research and Teaching in Philosophy at Rutgers University from 2012 to 2013. He is the author of On Ayn Rand and Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology and coeditor of Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology and Ayn Rand: A Companion to Her Works and Thought. He was a founding member of the Ayn Rand Society and coeditor of the Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies book series. 

James G. Lennox is professor emeritus of history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Aristotle on Inquiry, Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals I–IV, and Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life Science. Lennox is coeditor of Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology; Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf; and Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences. He was a founding member of the Ayn Rand Society and is coeditor of the Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies series.