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How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation
What is knowledge? How is it acquired? How are claims to knowledge to be validated? Can man achieve rational certainty,
or is he doomed to perpetual doubt?
How We Know presents an integrated set of answers to these and related questions, based on Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, including her unique theory of concepts. Rejecting the false alternative of mysticism vs. skepticism, Harry Binswanger provides an uncompromising defense of reason, logic, and objectivity.
Using vivid examples, he traces the hierarchical development of knowledge, from its base in sensory perception, to conceptformation, to logical inference, to its culmination in the principles of science and philosophy.
How We Know explains how following methods of cognition based on the facts of reality and on the nature of our cognitive equipment makes it possible to achieve rational certainty, no matter how abstract the issue.
Harry Binswanger earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1973. He has taught philosophy at several
universities, most recently at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Binswanger was an associate and friend of Ayn Rand in her final years, and since 1986 he has served on the Board of the Ayn Rand Institute.
He is the author of The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts and the editor of The Ayn Rand Lexicon, a mini-encyclopedia of Objectivism. He co-edited the expanded second edition of Ayn Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
Currently, Dr. Binswanger runs HBLetter, a subscription-based website on Objectivism.
or is he doomed to perpetual doubt?
How We Know presents an integrated set of answers to these and related questions, based on Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, including her unique theory of concepts. Rejecting the false alternative of mysticism vs. skepticism, Harry Binswanger provides an uncompromising defense of reason, logic, and objectivity.
Using vivid examples, he traces the hierarchical development of knowledge, from its base in sensory perception, to conceptformation, to logical inference, to its culmination in the principles of science and philosophy.
How We Know explains how following methods of cognition based on the facts of reality and on the nature of our cognitive equipment makes it possible to achieve rational certainty, no matter how abstract the issue.
Harry Binswanger earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1973. He has taught philosophy at several
universities, most recently at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Binswanger was an associate and friend of Ayn Rand in her final years, and since 1986 he has served on the Board of the Ayn Rand Institute.
He is the author of The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts and the editor of The Ayn Rand Lexicon, a mini-encyclopedia of Objectivism. He co-edited the expanded second edition of Ayn Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
Currently, Dr. Binswanger runs HBLetter, a subscription-based website on Objectivism.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
649 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 30, 2013
59 people are currently reading
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 4, 2017
An excellent primer for Objectivists who want to read ITOE but find it too technical.
I have been trying to read ITOE for 2 years but I always have to put it on hold after chapter 3 because it gets too technical after that. As someone who has no background in Psychology or Epistemology, I think that this book can prepare one to read ITOE.
In my personal opinion, anyone interested in Objectivist Epistemology should read these books in the following order: OPAR--> HWK--> ITOE.
OPAR: Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
HWK: How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation
ITOE: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
I have been trying to read ITOE for 2 years but I always have to put it on hold after chapter 3 because it gets too technical after that. As someone who has no background in Psychology or Epistemology, I think that this book can prepare one to read ITOE.
In my personal opinion, anyone interested in Objectivist Epistemology should read these books in the following order: OPAR--> HWK--> ITOE.
OPAR: Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
HWK: How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation
ITOE: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
July 7, 2019
Excellent, use it as a reference.
September 17, 2022
How We Know — Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation
Harry Binswanger ©2014 (414 pages)
A short Book Report by Ron Housley (9.16.2022)
Harry Binswanger launches his book with this:
John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T, once shared that he made it a point to read at least one difficult book per month; he was apparently a voracious reader and his difficult book was only one among many.
For me, I try to read one difficult book, but less frequently. These are the books that I am not able to fly through; and some of these are the books that have had lasting impact. Harry’s book, “How We Know,” was a recent difficult book.
Harry’s book is about how we know the things that we know; and how we go off the rails in our quest to know.
It all started for me decades ago when I attended a philosophy course focused on how reason and concepts were supposed to work — and I was astonished to learn that there even was such a thing as “epistemology.”
It turned out that there was a right way and a wrong way to go about the critical task of cognition; who knew?!
BAD EPISTEMOLOGY
This entire matter of “bad epistemology” is tied in with the idea that there are “right and wrong ways of using one’s mind volitionally” (p. 271). For many of us it is a long haul to arrive at understanding that it is no contradiction to be “certain” but “wrong.” It is a long haul to grasp that certainty, like knowledge itself, is contextual and that being contextual involves logic and objectivity.
It was a long slog through “studying” historical philosophers before I slowly came to grasp how the modern (Kantian) intellectuals came to dominate today’s academia and culture. My years of “formal” education were entirely past before, at last, the idea of “good vs. bad epistemology” began to explain for me how mankind had advanced so spectacularly and then how things began to go so terribly wrong. The last 2500 years started to make sense.
The whole “it’s true for you but not true for me” thing; and, the whole “it’s right for you but it might not be right for me” thing; and the whole “you don’t know what’s really there but only what is filtered by your own mind” thing; and, all the non-objective, mystical, skepticism-infused mental gyrations that have taken root where logic and common sense should have taken hold — all this gradually came into better focus.
And now it’s all becoming clearer why Americans are choosing more statism in place of liberty; it’s all becoming clearer how the Republicans lost their way as the one-time party of limited constitutional republicanism; it’s all becoming clearer how “safe-spaces” and “trigger warnings” have taken over the universities; it’s all becoming clearer what’s driving America’s return to faith and religion in place of reason and principles; it’s all the end result of: bad epistemology.
THE CORRECT NAME
Throughout the section on “Logic and Propositions,” the old Confucius quotation kept haunting me: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” Harry's book shows us how calling someone an “extremist,” for example, is an instance of not calling a thing by its proper name, when “extremist” is presented as a noun rather than as an adjective. An improper name is usually a wrong categorization; and it simply muddies up the attempt at cognition.
Then it became clear how it is wrong to claim that a broken clock, or a “stopped clock,” is NOT right twice a day — because a stopped clock NEVER tells us the time, even when its hands happen to coincide with a reading of the actual time.
Harry's book sorts out the details of how cognition works and doesn’t work.
OBJECTIVITY
Nearly every day I see confusion over the meaning of the term, “objective.”
Harry’s clarification is helpful.
He says that “Truth” and “knowledge” are “win-words”— i.e., terms that apply to cases of cognitive success.” (p. 295) Thinking about “objectivity” in terms of achieving cognitive success or not is a slightly nuanced perspective here. Harry insists that a process “deliberately guided by logic” is an absolute requirement before a thought process can be called “objective;” that the mental process can’t be helter-skelter if it is to be objective; that before a process can qualify as “objective” it must literally deploy rules of logic — and he reminds us that those rules “do not apply themselves.”
Often when I encounter what seems like a “non-objective” thought process, the breach of logic at play turns out to be deliberately evading the full context of available knowledge, rather than some innocent oversight — but it looks like Harry is calling either one of these “non-objective.” I doubt that many people realize that failing to take into account the full context of available knowledge is even a matter of logic. It was revolutionary for me to grasp that “taking into account the full context of available knowledge” is an integral part of being objective.
HISTORY
Near the book’s end, Harry makes some broad observations about some of philosophy’s favorite figures, pointing out how much philosophy consists of variations made upon earlier mistakes.
Grasping the intricacies of mistakes woven together in different ways requires more mental horsepower than most of us non-professional philosophers have at hand, but it is fun to note the slashing and burning that Harry inflicted upon the lineage from Plato, Descartes, Hume and Kant down through Popper, Kuhn and Rorty.
I suspect that Harry is correct as he excoriates long cherished positions of those in the lineage; and I hope we’ll all see the day when the full explication is a matter of ordinary understanding.
For now, Harry’s book can serve like a textbook for those of us who want to sharpen our clarity, at whatever intellectual level we happen to be. Thank you, Harry, for making our challenge more obtainable.
Harry Binswanger ©2014 (414 pages)
A short Book Report by Ron Housley (9.16.2022)
Harry Binswanger launches his book with this:
Mankind has existed for 400,000 years. But 395,000 of those years were consumed by the Stone Age. The factor that freed men from endless toil and early death, the root cause of the elevated level of existence we now take for granted, is one precious value: knowledge. The painfully acquired knowledge of how to master nature, how to organize social existence, and how to understand himself is what enabled man to rise from the cave to the skyscraper, from warring clans to a global economy, from an average lifespan of less than 30 years to one approaching 80.
John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T, once shared that he made it a point to read at least one difficult book per month; he was apparently a voracious reader and his difficult book was only one among many.
For me, I try to read one difficult book, but less frequently. These are the books that I am not able to fly through; and some of these are the books that have had lasting impact. Harry’s book, “How We Know,” was a recent difficult book.
Harry’s book is about how we know the things that we know; and how we go off the rails in our quest to know.
It all started for me decades ago when I attended a philosophy course focused on how reason and concepts were supposed to work — and I was astonished to learn that there even was such a thing as “epistemology.”
It turned out that there was a right way and a wrong way to go about the critical task of cognition; who knew?!
BAD EPISTEMOLOGY
This entire matter of “bad epistemology” is tied in with the idea that there are “right and wrong ways of using one’s mind volitionally” (p. 271). For many of us it is a long haul to arrive at understanding that it is no contradiction to be “certain” but “wrong.” It is a long haul to grasp that certainty, like knowledge itself, is contextual and that being contextual involves logic and objectivity.
It was a long slog through “studying” historical philosophers before I slowly came to grasp how the modern (Kantian) intellectuals came to dominate today’s academia and culture. My years of “formal” education were entirely past before, at last, the idea of “good vs. bad epistemology” began to explain for me how mankind had advanced so spectacularly and then how things began to go so terribly wrong. The last 2500 years started to make sense.
The whole “it’s true for you but not true for me” thing; and, the whole “it’s right for you but it might not be right for me” thing; and the whole “you don’t know what’s really there but only what is filtered by your own mind” thing; and, all the non-objective, mystical, skepticism-infused mental gyrations that have taken root where logic and common sense should have taken hold — all this gradually came into better focus.
And now it’s all becoming clearer why Americans are choosing more statism in place of liberty; it’s all becoming clearer how the Republicans lost their way as the one-time party of limited constitutional republicanism; it’s all becoming clearer how “safe-spaces” and “trigger warnings” have taken over the universities; it’s all becoming clearer what’s driving America’s return to faith and religion in place of reason and principles; it’s all the end result of: bad epistemology.
THE CORRECT NAME
Throughout the section on “Logic and Propositions,” the old Confucius quotation kept haunting me: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” Harry's book shows us how calling someone an “extremist,” for example, is an instance of not calling a thing by its proper name, when “extremist” is presented as a noun rather than as an adjective. An improper name is usually a wrong categorization; and it simply muddies up the attempt at cognition.
Then it became clear how it is wrong to claim that a broken clock, or a “stopped clock,” is NOT right twice a day — because a stopped clock NEVER tells us the time, even when its hands happen to coincide with a reading of the actual time.
Harry's book sorts out the details of how cognition works and doesn’t work.
OBJECTIVITY
Nearly every day I see confusion over the meaning of the term, “objective.”
Harry’s clarification is helpful.
He says that “Truth” and “knowledge” are “win-words”— i.e., terms that apply to cases of cognitive success.” (p. 295) Thinking about “objectivity” in terms of achieving cognitive success or not is a slightly nuanced perspective here. Harry insists that a process “deliberately guided by logic” is an absolute requirement before a thought process can be called “objective;” that the mental process can’t be helter-skelter if it is to be objective; that before a process can qualify as “objective” it must literally deploy rules of logic — and he reminds us that those rules “do not apply themselves.”
Often when I encounter what seems like a “non-objective” thought process, the breach of logic at play turns out to be deliberately evading the full context of available knowledge, rather than some innocent oversight — but it looks like Harry is calling either one of these “non-objective.” I doubt that many people realize that failing to take into account the full context of available knowledge is even a matter of logic. It was revolutionary for me to grasp that “taking into account the full context of available knowledge” is an integral part of being objective.
HISTORY
Near the book’s end, Harry makes some broad observations about some of philosophy’s favorite figures, pointing out how much philosophy consists of variations made upon earlier mistakes.
Grasping the intricacies of mistakes woven together in different ways requires more mental horsepower than most of us non-professional philosophers have at hand, but it is fun to note the slashing and burning that Harry inflicted upon the lineage from Plato, Descartes, Hume and Kant down through Popper, Kuhn and Rorty.
I suspect that Harry is correct as he excoriates long cherished positions of those in the lineage; and I hope we’ll all see the day when the full explication is a matter of ordinary understanding.
For now, Harry’s book can serve like a textbook for those of us who want to sharpen our clarity, at whatever intellectual level we happen to be. Thank you, Harry, for making our challenge more obtainable.
April 4, 2014
This is a must-read for Objectivists. I had read Miss Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology many years ago. "How We Know" by Harry Binswanger certainly took me from completely understanding to fully grasping her important work.
January 9, 2019
Epistemology is still an underdeveloped science. With this comprehensive tome, Harry Binswanger produces a vital contribution. Inspired by Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy, he explicates the nature of reason, concepts, and logic, and how a fallible human consciousness validates its ideas. His theories stand in sharp contrast to the false dichotomies of intrinsicism vs. subjectivism (in metaphysics) and rationalism vs. empiricism (in epistemology).
November 4, 2018
Good introduction to Objectivist epistemology but deeply flawed whenever it tries to go into new territory.
August 1, 2021
A much needed comprehensive review of Ayn Rand's theory of concepts. I found it clarified a bunch of points that I had missed on many re-reads of ITOE.
December 8, 2021
Binswanger takes some of the most complex philosophical problems and show how objectivism solves them. It is truly a must read for all objectivists and those who have an intrest in philosophy
March 1, 2025
It is a good book.
Read
August 12, 2014For now, I am putting this book down. I hated the introduction, but I enjoyed the first few chapters. I've decided I need more context to really understand this book. I'm going to learn some philosophical methodology first, make a broad survey of epistemology, then come back. Maybe.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews