Conceptual Clarity and Fallacies that Wreck It

Expand your understanding of the basic principles of concept formation and usage, along with the conceptual fallacies that thwart thinking and obliterate objectivity. 

The principles of logic, both inductive and deductive, are crucial to clear thinking. But they are not the fundamental tools for this purpose. Concepts are. Indeed, the principles of logic are made of concepts.

In this course, drawing from Ayn Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and other works, we will examine the basic principles and methods involved in forming, defining, and using concepts correctly. We will also examine violations of these principles and methods, and see how such violations cause mental fog, widespread confusion, and human carnage.

You will enhance and fortify your understanding of the nature, roles, and relationships of:

• concepts and logic;
• the principle of conceptual-need;
• the unit-perspective and the principle of unit-economy;
• measurement-omission, the some-but-any principle, and the nature of abstraction;
• the principles of correct definition;
• Rand’s razors;
• the principles of hierarchy and context;
• the fallacies of package-dealing, concept-stealing, frozen abstraction, context-dropping, reification of the zero, argument from ignorance;
• and more.

Participants must read (or reread) Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology in advance of the first session.