By disagreeing with Positivist philosophy, Rand’s philosophy disagrees with itself.
Rand’s logical process identifies statements as being true or false by first observing the world around us, then identifying what we observe as being either contradictory or non-contradictory to the statement.
On Pg. 77, Rand identifies the contrary of any concept as being all other concepts we observe – “the contrary of the concept “table” – a non-table- is every other kind of existent”. And on Pg 152, “In reality, contradictions cannot exist; in a cognitive process, a contradiction is the proof of an error. Hence the method man must follow: to identify the facts he observes, in a non-contradictory manner. The method is logic-‘the art of non-contradictory identification’.”
The Positivist process of falsification evaluates statements by trying to identify and observe contrary evidence. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/) Falsified is the same as contradicted. The process of observation, evaluation and classification are the same for both Positivist and Objectivist.
But Rand’s philosophy rejects falsification, Pg 159 and 160, calling it an “inversion” and a “way of invalidating all of human knowledge.”
If Positivist falsification by observation is incorrect, then Rand’s observation of contradiction must be incorrect.
Ayn Rand, An Introduction to Objective Epistemology, Signet Edition, New American Library. Also Ch. 2, the Analytic/Synthetic Dichotomy by Leonard Piekoff.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ is the source for my paraphrasing of the practice of falsification.