Rand’s philosophy misrepresents falsification with an inconsistent argument.
Falsification tries to identify and observe any possible evidence which contradicts the predictions of a theory. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/
Rand’s philosophy rejects the Positivist process of falsification, pg. 159, claiming it requires us to: “evade the facts of experience and arbitrarily to invent a set of impossible circumstances that contradict these facts.”
Yet, on Pg. 77, Rand identifies the contrary of any concept as being all other concepts – “the contrary of the concept “table” – a non-table- is every other kind of existent”.
The argument against falsification is inconsistent with her general point. If she knows any concept then she knows what is the contrary; just as the Positivist knows what evidence will contradict a theory’s prediction. The argument is inconsistent with her example of the table, where non-tables don’t have to be specifically identified in impossible circumstances.
Rand’s argument is inconsistent. Rand contradicts herself.
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.