(An earlier draft of this comment appeared in my blog on Saturday, 15 March 2008.)

As part of my review one day of my playful actions, I mentioned that I helped Dad view two, DVD lectures. These were part of a series of classes (now offered at church) which focuses on the Enlightenment.

These two lectures focused on the life and thought of David Hume.

Following his viewing of the lectures, Dad and I began to discuss them. Specifically, we discussed the philosophy of David Hume.

(Throughout this post, when I quote, I paraphrase from memory.)

Early in our discussion, Dad said, "I'm not sure I know anything."

I chuckled and said, "Are you feeling quite sure that you might know nothing?"

He smiled.

After a pause, he asked - recognizing how deeply immersed in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism I had been for two decades - "Did Ayn Rand have anything to say about Hume?" I'm guessing that he felt confident that this would get me going.

I mentioned that nowadays, for multiple reasons, I feel much dissatisfaction with what I take to be Ayn Rand's propensity to moralize. By my standards, this moralizing stood in the way of her more deeply appreciating why various thinkers formulated views with which she disagreed.

I also mentioned that in watching one of the lectures about Hume, I felt grateful. I felt that way because I gained a deeper appreciation for what I gather were his fundamental intentions in formulating his philosophy.

I mentioned that it struck me that in expressing his dissatisfaction with various thinkers whom he regarded as dogmatic, Hume sought to pay attention to a crucial attribute of consciousness. Consciousness, he maintained, isn't produced by revelation, as if some supernatural power were magically beaming awareness into a person. Instead, Hume insisted, consciousness involves both natural means and limitations.

Given my interpretation of Hume, however, in the following respect, I formulate my worldview differently than he did.

Given that our consciousness involves means and limitations, and that consciousness is mediated by a process, Hume is said to have disputed that we can ever know the nature of "things in themselves."

(With the expression, "things in themselves," I don't feel remotely as satisfied as I would prefer. I take it that Hume means this: instead of remaining aware of the world, we remain aware only of our impressions.)

Rand did offer a response to Hume, I told Dad. She maintained that implicitly, Hume held consciousness to a supernaturalistic standard and faulted it for failing to live up to that standard.

I explained that I found this paradoxical, since it seems to me as if Hume had striven to develop a philosophy in an effort to overcome what he regarded as the limitations of the supernaturalistic model of human knowledge!

Returning to Rand, though, she maintained that yes, consciousness involves an identity, a process and limitations. Nevertheless, she did not consider the failure of consciousness to receive magically beamed revelation as any kind of a failure to remain aware of the world. By contrast, she maintained that the only kind of consciousness which could ever actually function of course would involve an identity, a process and limitations. Such were the means by which any consciousness could be aware of the world - not the obstacles to such awareness.

Within my own worldview, I agree with what I take to be Rand's position that consciousness involves an identity, a means and limitations. I agree with Rand that consciousness remains aware of the world by some, specific means and in some, specific form.

Rand uses this model to maintain, for example, that all forms of sensory perception, instead of creating illusion, qualify as instances of authentic awareness.

Even so, I take a radical step which, by my understanding, Rand never took. Indeed, I imagine that in response to my taking such a step, she would have reacted with hostility.

I take Rand to maintain the following.

She limits to the sensory perceptual level her idea that human consciousness always involves authentic awareness. Once we reach the conceptual level, though, our consciousness no longer functions automatically. Human beings embody free will, can choose to focus their minds or not, and by this means can cripple their consciousness conceptually. (To me, she seems to imagine that much of the time, most human beings do cripple their own minds!) For Rand, only once a person meets specific and rigorous epistemological criteria can that person justifiably claim to be conceptually aware.

This all relates to my impression that overwhelmingly, Western thought (and perhaps most recorded human thought) has remained preoccupied with the question of "true versus false."

By contrast, I conceive of truth as a biological, human need which each person satisfies to different degrees along a continuum - an idea which I introduce in my worldview summary.

So in my worldview, I take my interpretation of Rand's idea of being aware "by some means and in some form" and, in a different sense than she does, I apply it to the conceptual level, as well.

By my standards, all forms of thought and conceptualization fundamentally remain instances of authentic awareness rather than illusions. For me, though, thoughts, worldviews and so on model the world. Some model the world more efficiently than others. But all of them model the world.

I look forward to writing more about these and related ideas in the future.