_Real Essentialism_ presents a comprehensive defence of neo-Aristotelian essentialism. Do objects have essences? Must they be the kinds of things they are in spite of the changes they undergo? Can we know what things are really like – can we define and classify reality? Many, if not most, philosophers doubt this, influenced by centuries of empiricism, and by the anti-essentialism of Wittgenstein, Quine, Popper, and other thinkers. _Real Essentialism_ reinvigorates the tradition of realist, essentialist metaphysics, defending the reality and knowability (...) of essence, the possibility of objective, immutable definition, and its relevance to contemporary scientific and metaphysical issues such as whether essence transcends physics and chemistry, the essence of life, the nature of biological species, and the nature of the person. (shrink)

“Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. . . . You went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough (...) to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good?—by what standard? (shrink)

A collection of essays argues that philosophy is an essential element of human life--a force that shapes human character and national culture and destiny--and offers the rational philosophy of Objectivism as an alternative.

William Dwyer reviews Initiative: Human Agency and Society, in which Tibor Machan argues that free will is a prerequisite for knowledge, ethics, and political liberty. Machan criticizes Hayek, Stigler, and "public choice" economics for their economic determinism and for discounting the importance of abstract ideas. Despite making a good case against environmental and economic determinism, Machan fails adequately to defend his central thesis that free will exists and that it is required for normative values.

The mind - body and free will - determinism problem is presented as an instance of the more general top-down versus bottom-up process model. The construct of a metaphysical hierarchy consisting of 3 levels is introduced, with each level governed by emergent, non-overlapping fundamental causal forces. Rand's theories of epistemology, language, and volition are shown to be inherently circular and impossible to be true. The concepts of metaphysical identity and epistemological identity are introduced. Metaphysics and epistemology are recharacterized in exclusively (...) bottom-up terms informed by recent advances in the natural sciences, along with theories for perception, similarity, language, and volition. (shrink)

In this sequel to his essay "Ayn Rand and The Objective'" (JARS, Fall 2007), the author warns against "the seduction of 'the basic"' and uses ideas by Efron, Peikoff, and Aristotle to argue that introspection and mental data (including mind) are objective and that causal efficacy of mind and mind-body interaction only make sense if mind is conceived of not as an attribute, but as an entity (viz., the conscious human brain). None of this, however, implies Epiphenomenalism or that consciousness (...) is irrelevant to human history. (shrink)