Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology

Philosopher-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 (Editor)
Allan Gotthelf (1942–2013) was Anthem Foundation Distinguished Fellow for Research and Teaching in Philosophy at Rutgers University. 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 the Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies book series.

James G. Lennox (Editor)
James G. Lennox is professor emeritus of history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published widely on Aristotle, Charles Darwin, and evolutionary biology. His books include Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals I–IV, a translation and commentary in Oxford’s Clarendon Aristotle Series, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology in the Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology Series, Aristotle on Inquiry, and many coedited volumes.