LEXICON

The following is a list of terms that are crucial to the descussion here or may turn up in Randite Material. Do not be surprised if this gets added to.A LEXICON is more detailed in its presentation of terms than a glossary. This includes both general philosophical terms and thos pertaining to Randism.[to be proofread]

OBJECTIVISM: The original name given by Miss Rand, to her philoshical system. I have dropped it for the reason that it is a technical philosophical term and to use a technical term, in any field, as a name is improper. I use RANDISM and RANDITE from Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Another term you will see is "Neo-Objectivist"
RANDISM: the philosophical systme proposed by Ayn Rand, which holds that existence, the external world, exists apart from and before anyone's data, information, knowledge, judgements, wishes or feelings and the only proper means of knowing anything about this world is the faculty of Reaosn, which integrates the material provided by the senses or instruments, by means of the logical process, into a non-contradictory, systematic, organized whole.
SENSE OF LIFE: RANDISM: "A subconscious, pre-conceptual, emotionally integreated equivalent of philosophy: particularly metaphysicis" . The major guidence system of a child and a philosophical aid to an adult. The mechanism that causes strong reactions to works of art.
PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY: RANDISM: The characteristic or habitual way a persons uses his or her mental faculties" (Nathaniel Branden) Part of one's specific psychology; part of one's mentality. What explains how a less intelligent, IQ-wise often wipes the floor with a brighter person.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISM: As used in RANDISM: A political economic system in which ther governmet neither aids nor hinders economic transactions that do not include force or fraud. As Miss Rand put it. "There must be a total separation of state and economy as in and for the same reason as, the separation of Church and State"

NECESSARY and CONTIGENT: categories of actions, the first being unavoidable due to the nature of the things, that is, metaphysically per-determined. That the stomach digests food when running right is Necessary. That a person may go to a particular place, buy a particular item, visit this site or the myriad of conscious behaviors is Contingent: Did not have to happen.
HUMAN, MAN, MANKIND: The Terrestrial Vertibrate Animal whose chief defining characteristic is Volitional Rational Consciouness:

CONSCIOUSNESS: The state of, the faculty of, and all that goes with awareness of the external world

RATIONAL: Fucntionality pertaining to the faculty of Reason. integrating the material provided by the senses, instruments and the results of previous mental processes into a hierarchical, organized, systematic and non-contradictory framework. This is both in specific subject and context. and the one's entire body of knowledge

VOLITIONAL: one chooses and deliberatey or habitually acts to start the process and focus the mind, aka mental faculty to a specific task

As Ayn Rand put it. "The only Choice you have is to think or not to think". This definition is, as far as I know uniquely mine. The ordinary defintions used is "The Rational Animal" coined by Aristotle Which I found to be true but insufficient.
ARISTOTELIAN: A family of philosophical systems that follow the precepts of the ancient Greek philospher, Aristotle. These include

ARISTOTELIANISM: The phiosophical systems that are direct decendants of Aristotle's work
THOMISM: The system founded by St. Thomas Aquinas (if there was ever a man that Ayn Rand could have been said to have had a "philosophical crush" on, it was Aquinas) that sought to integrate Aristotelianism and "Sacred Doctrine"; the organized articles of Catholic belief of the time.
RANDISM, OBJECTIVISM: The philoshical system that was founded by Ayn Rand, to which I subscribe totally, with neither exception or addition.

This is by far not exhaustive, for example the Libertarian thoeretician, MURRAY ROTHBOARD, prclaimed himself to be an Aristotelian; coulda fooled me! ARISTOTELIAN also refers to a leitmotif or character of a persons without specific reference to a philosphy.
ATHEIISM, ATHEIST, ATHEISTIC: having no belief in or reference to any deity or deities. There are some who quibble about whether non-belief equals a denial of the existance of God: Either such things exist or not, there is no middle ground and belief is only a characteristic of the person's mind, not of the facts of reality. IN FACT, to not beiive A is to deny A (from Aristotle: "A or non-A" called "The Law of the Excluded Middle" or in modern speech "you can't have it both ways: S**t or get off the pot!") so to speak of "weak Atheism" vs "strong Atheism" is to "mess with Mr. In-between" and invalid. If it does not equal a denial, it directly implies one. Neither Atheism or Atheists are "real" terms, since they define as a characteristic to a person based on what such person does not believe, or what a philosphical system does not inclued in its reckoning of the world, not what they do. it is improper to define by a negative since you cannot prove a negative. These are just handy terms. There is a difference between being a Randite and a Marxist (God knows!) though both systems are atheistic and both Rand and Marx are self-proclaimed atheists (and so am I). Despite what the Reds tried to do, you cannot teach Atheism. HOW COME?. Atheism is not a "thing" Like theism, it is a condition, Imagine a person with an exagerrated fear of falling, we call this person "acrophobic". The condition is called "acrophobia", however there is no such "thing" as acrophobia, only a condition. The noun from is a handy linguistic device by which we sum over all the relevent attributes of being acrophobic and using a noun to describe them. As I once put it, An atheist is a person who wants to live as much as anyone else.
AGNOSTICISM: Contrary to pupular usage it doesn not reference a person who neither believes in God nor denies the existence of God. Thommas Huxley (well, one of the Huxleys anyway, before Alldous), who coined the term to describe his attitude towards the possibility of knowledge of the "supernatural" held that knowledge of the supernatural was not possible. This means a person may be a theistic agnostic or, like me, an atheistic agnostic: One pertains to the position on deities, the other to the position on the possibility of knowledge of the supernaturual which I lump in with the whole psychic thing, ghosts, angels, djinn, the tooth fairy (OOPS!), Transubstantiation and miricles, and all the crap that is on Coast to Coast. COHERENT: internally consistent with itself
CORRESPONENCE: Matching the external world in the relevent matter.
MATERIAL WAY or FACT Petinant to the subject under discussion. What this revolves around is discourse and oath-taking. When a person takes an oath to tell the truth in a court, he is perfectly free to lie through his teeth if the question is not relevent to the facts of the case as when Mark Furmon said in sworn testimony, that he never used the word "nigger", in the O. J. Simpson trial, since it was not relevent to the course of actions in the case since it was not in the context of the case. He knew he would not be prosecuted. If as a criticism of Space Patrol, I mentioned that it was broadcast in Black and White. Well, givine the timeframe, what wasn't? so that is no reflelction on the quality of the show with respect to say, Milton Berle or Hopalong Cassidy. in both examples the items are not MATERIAL FACTS and are referred to as "immaterial". Another category is sufficiency worthy of consideration. Take the religion of Global Warming, which is this. The world is heating up significantly and this is caused by human activity. Well what they're finding is that this warming is at most 1/100^th of a degree F/yr which is, as enginerrs say, "way down in the noise", meaning marginal at best. So If one is asked if the earth is heating up, one would be within ones right to say "No" since you know the proponent of the Faith will try to use the piddling fraction of a degree to make the case and put on a sideshow. Let him bring up the significance and then tear him to shreds on that. If he's smart he won't go there. The thing is too small to matter and is therefore imaterial (even climatologists only view it as an item of speculative interest).
POSITIVE and NEGATIVE: These do not refoer to anything good or bad. what they reference is one's position regarding the subject matter at hand. For instance, "Does God exist?". If you say "yes", that is the POSITIVE. If you say "No", that is the NEGATIVE. Another case: "Adolf Hitler was a libertarian good guy". If you say "Yes" that is the POSITIVE. if you say "No" that is the NAGATIVE. Where this understanding is crucial is to understand the nature of the "Fallacy of the Argument to Ignorance", which is technically called "trying to shift the burden of proof from the positive to the negative". It is a logical fallacy becuase it is generally conceded that one coannot prove a negative and the Negative is the default position: "If not A then Not-A". The negative is presumed to be the case and must be defeated by proving the positive. If the positive is refuted then the negative wins, if the postivie fails to prove out then the negative stnads, if a less complex positve is presented as an alternative to the one under question, its simplicity gives it the edge (Occams's Razor); the negative stands and if an alternative positive that is mutually exclusive to the positve under question is established then the negative stands. This is so because the discussion is about the Positive that is presented, not alternatives. This is how the "alibi" works, The proscution's case fails if the defendant is shown to have not been at the scene of the crime (and therefore could not have done the dirty deed).
IMPEACHMENT: This is the process by which the natural advantage of a position is negated. For example, in chess White has a natural advantage by having the first move. If Black gets the advantage, either through sharp play or White's error, dullness or mischance, then White, while not defeated or maybe even threatened at this point, is impeached and is brought to an equal footing with Black. This manifests itself in the theist/atheist discussion in the following manner. The Atheist is either in fact or successfully made to look like a nihilist. Now, we know that nihilism is false since we see all the things around us. So the Atheist loses the natural advantage of th Negative position and is therefore impeached in that discussion. He/she hasn't lost the argument, just the advantage that was there going in (and unless he/she shows sharp play or the theist commits a fallacy, will probably lose). This is, specifically, impeachment by context; by refuting nihilism, the implicit, unstated context in which the Atheist in this discussion is operating.