Consciousness as Possessing Identity

My previous essay on sensory qualities indicated that past philosophies generated doubts about the validity of the senses. As would be expected, historically there have been criticisms levied against all of the standard forms of gaining knowledge: perception, as we’ve already seen, but also the conceptual faculty/faculty of reason, and the art of logic. The principle that consciousness has identity gives a general answer to these kinds of criticisms. It also highlights what should be regarded as the proper starting point for an epistemology.

Sensory Qualities as Real

If Objectivism had been created earlier in history, perhaps a mere mention of the validity of the senses combined with the consciousness axiom would have sufficed. However, this is not the case: centuries, even millennia of philosophical debates have clouded and casted doubts on the issue of sense-perception. Several problems and purported solutions were advanced long before Objectivism was formed, and merit responses or clarification. This principle, the validity and metaphysical status of sensory qualities, is one such issue that will be tackled in the foregoing.

The Metaphysical Status of Sensory Qualities

Philosophy acknowledges that perception is an activity that people engage in. Epistemology generally holds that an “object” is “that which a cognitive subject perceives, knows, is aware of, describes, refers to, etc.”[1] A perception is understood to be a type of enduring awareness of an object.