Our culture seems incapable of thinking in fundamentals. It is infested with the creed of Pragmatism—the creed which holds that generalizations are “simplistic” because what seems true today may not be true tomorrow, because no two situations are ever the same, because judgments can be made only on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. Consider the following example.
The American Enterprise Institute, a noted conservative think tank, published an article titled “10 Reasons Why America Is So Much Richer Than Other Rich Nations.” Among the reasons given—I’ll include only five—are these:
- “A decentralized banking system” and “a very active venture capital market.”
- “Labor markets . . . unimpeded by large trade unions, state-owned enterprises or excessively restrictive labor regulations.”
- “[P]rivate ownership of land and mineral rights.”
- “A favorable regulatory environment . . . [which] is less burdensome on businesses than the regulations imposed by European countries.”
- “A smaller size of government than in other industrial countries . . . [and so Americans] can keep a larger share of their earnings.”
In this hodgepodge of explanations for America’s prosperity, is there a fundamental explanation? Is there one explanation that underlies and encompasses the others? Yes—freedom. Freedom is the most important reason behind America’s, and any nation’s, prosperity. To the extent that freedom exists, prosperity follows; to the extent that freedom is curtailed, prosperity shrinks. Freedom—which means freedom from government intervention—is the fundamental explanation, while the others are secondary or derivative explanations.
But what does that actually mean? What exactly are we saying when we name a fundamental? Is the relation between a fundamental and its derivatives cause-and-effect? Is it something else?
FUNDAMENTALS IN CONCEPT-FORMATION
The need to identify fundamentals arises with respect to characteristics—to characteristics of things we’re trying to distinguish from other things. It occurs in the process of concept-formation. (I’m assuming a basic familiarity with how we form concepts, as described in Ayn Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) In forming a concept, we want to distinguish one group of things from others, which we do by means of their characteristics. If we’re dealing with the concept “man,” for instance, we want to know what distinguishes man from animals. We can name many characteristics that man possesses and animals don’t—such as the ability to darn socks, to manufacture lipstick, to write poetry, and so forth.
But what we need is a defining characteristic—an all-encompassing characteristic that allows us to hold onto the concept “man,” a characteristic that tells us this is what really distinguishes man from animals. Instead, what we have is a smorgasbord, consisting of an unmanageably large number of very different types of distinguishing characteristics. We need to somehow unite all these characteristics, so that we can identify a defining characteristic. How? By finding something they all have in common. By condensing them into one. By grasping that these different distinguishing characteristics are in one respect the same—they are all just forms of a single distinguishing characteristic: rationality. Darning socks is a form of rationality. Writing poetry is a form of rationality. Rationality is the fundamental characteristic; the others are derivatives. Rationality thus becomes man’s defining, distinguishing characteristic.
The relationship between rationality and the other distinguishing characteristics is not cause-and-effect. It is not the relationship between entities and their actions. It is not the cause-effect model of billiard balls moving upon being struck by another billiard ball, or a window breaking when hit by a rock. The fundamental-derivative relationship is not one of causality, but of identity. In the primary meaning of causality, rationality does not cause the act of sock-darning or poetry-writing; rationality is sock-darning and poetry-writing. Rationality is an abstraction referring to man’s ability to reason, to think. When we reduce that abstraction back down to concrete reality, what else is the ability to think except the ability to think in order to darn socks, to write poetry, to manufacture lipstick? Rationality is thus the widest among man’s distinguishing characteristics. And sock-darning, et al. are subsumed by it, because they are simply its narrower forms.
WHAT DO FUNDAMENTALS EXPLAIN?
The fundamental explains the derivatives. It explains what in their nature makes them members of a class—in this case, the class of man’s distinguishing characteristics. Taken separately, each characteristic distinguishes man for its own reason—man can darn socks and animals can’t, man can write poetry and animals can’t. The fundamental tells us that it is qua rationality that sock-darning and the others are distinguishing characteristics. Thus, the many characteristics differentiating man from animals represent, not many separate reasons for man’s distinctiveness, but fundamentally just one: rationality.
What the fundamental explains is membership in a class. It identifies the one element that is present in all members of the class. It explains, not why man can darn socks, but rather why sock-darning along with poetry-writing and all the rest belong in the class of man’s distinguishing characteristics. That is, sock-darning, et al. qua distinguishing characteristics of man are explained by rationality qua distinguishing characteristic of man.
(As to the difference between a fundamental and an essential: The fundamental pertains to a relationship among a concept’s characteristics; the essential pertains to a relationship between a concept and one [or a small number] of its characteristics. The fundamental tells us how to condense many characteristics into one [or a small number]; the essential tells us that the condensed characteristic is what distinguishes the concept from everything else. With respect to the concept “man,” for instance, the fundamental tells us that sock-darning, poetry-writing, et al. are simply forms of, or derivatives of, rationality; the essential tells us that rationality is the characteristic that best distinguishes man from other animals. The fundamental, in other words, provides the means by which we can arrive at the essential.)
FUNDAMENTALS PERTAIN TO ABSTRACTIONS
Fundamentality is an epistemological tool pertaining to a relationship among abstractions—a relationship among members of a class. When you say that rationality is man’s fundamental characteristic, that is not a statement about man’s metaphysical nature. The faculty of rationality is metaphysically given; its fundamentality is not.
Imagine that the only organisms in existence were people and plants, but not animals. In that case, man’s fundamental characteristic would not be rationality. Instead, it would be the one that best distinguishes man from the only other living organisms, plants—i.e., consciousness and locomotion. Man would be defined the way we now define animals.
Metaphysically, nothing about man would have changed. Each individual would still be able to reason, and his life would still depend on the use of his rational faculty. But rationality would not be a fundamental characteristic. Identifying man’s fundamental characteristic serves an epistemological purpose: it explains the class of characteristics that distinguish man from animals.
Unlike causality, which names the relation between concrete entities and their concrete actions, fundamentality does not apply to (unconceptualized) concretes. Fundamentality is very different from causality. A fundamental subsumes its derivatives; a cause does not subsume its effects. The derivatives are forms of the fundamental; the effects are not forms of the cause.
Nor does fundamentality apply to an abstraction being considered apart from its membership in some class. We cannot randomly pick something and ask “What is fundamental to it?” Even for the characteristics we have been discussing, if one does not specify a class to which they belong, one cannot seek a fundamental. If we were to consider the phenomenon of sock-darning in isolation, it would make no sense to claim that rationality is fundamental to it. Its “fundamental” could then just as well be dexterous fingers—since one can’t darn socks without them, or being alive—since one can darn socks only if one is living. It is only in the context of sock-darning and rationality qua distinguishing characteristics of man that we have the need and the possibility of uniting the many characteristics into one, fundamental characteristic.
Thus, every identification of fundamentality involves three elements: 1) a conceptual category, or class, containing a collection of members; 2) a fundamental within that collection; and 3) the derivatives within that collection. Every statement of fundamentality amounts to this: “With respect to X, A is fundamental to B”; or “Qua members of class X, A is fundamental to B, the derivative” (and when we say B we mean the other members of that class as well).
Let me stress that when I say fundamentality is not a metaphysical term, that does not mean it has no basis in reality. Obviously, it does. As do all epistemological terms. But fundamentals name a relationship among members of a class. And terms like “member” or “class” do not refer to metaphysical facts. In concrete reality there are no members or classes. There are only concrete entities. As conceptual beings, we create classifications, which are ultimately based on concrete facts, so that we are able mentally to deal with all the concretes. But if no human consciousness existed, there would be nothing for “fundamentality” to refer to.
FUNDAMENTALITY AS APPLIED TO ANY CLASS OF DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS
Fundamentality applies to the distinguishing characteristics, not only of a concept, but of any classification. For example, in considering history, we observe that the period of the Renaissance was very different from the preceding Medieval period. Many things happened during the Renaissance that did not happen earlier. There was a flourishing of exploration, of scientific discoveries, of inventions, of art, etc. So we have a vast array of distinguishing characteristics of the Renaissance.
But each is different from the other, and we want to understand what makes them all distinctive to the Renaissance. Is there something they all have in common? Is there a way to unite the many into one? Yes—by searching for the fundamental. All these distinguishing characteristics are simply forms of one thing: the rediscovery of reason. All the distinctive activities of the Renaissance are subsumed by that fundamental. They are all derivative characteristics of that one fundamental characteristic.
Here too, it is meaningless to ask “What is fundamental to the activity of exploring new lands?” Only if we’re considering the exploring as one of the members of some class—only if it’s exploring qua distinguishing characteristic of the Renaissance—can we identify a fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the Renaissance.
Or consider Howard Roark’s quest in The Fountainhead to understand the Dean. He saw that there were people to be classified as “Dean-types,” as against “Roark-types.” He knew that the two types were different in some significant way. He observed many of the distinguishing characteristics of the Dean-types: Peter Keating’s obeying his mother’s wishes for his career choice; the Dean’s revering the judgment of past authorities on architecture; Guy Francon’s deferral to the demands of his clients. Roark saw all that, but initially he couldn’t name the one thing that united them all.
When he finally grasped the answer, what he grasped was the fundamental characteristic. He realized that all the characteristics distinguishing the Dean-types were actually forms of the same thing: second-handedness. They were all derivatives of that one fundamental. He now understood that what really made Keating and the others into Dean-types was their second-handedness. His discovery amounted to: “With respect to the distinguishing characteristics of the class of Dean-types, second-handedness is fundamental to obeying one’s mother’s wishes, etc.” That is, the wider characteristic of second-handedness subsumes, and explains, all those narrower characteristics.
FUNDAMENTALS AS APPLIED TO PROPOSITIONS
Now, let’s extend the role of fundamentals to include propositions. So far, the discussion has been about fundamentals as applied to a class of distinguishing characteristics. But in addition to fundamental characteristics, there are fundamental causes, fundamental effects, fundamental values, fundamental arguments, etc.—as expressed in propositions. That is, we need to look not only at fundamental characteristics, but at fundamental truths.
Consider violations of rights. Someone first thinking about this issue can understand, on a common-sense level, that shooting a person is a violation of his rights—that one has a right not to be shot and that the shooter ought to be stopped. He can then progress to naming other actions—kidnapping, stealing—that are also violations of the victim’s rights. He has named a class of rights-violations, which he formulates as propositions, or truths, about that class: “Shooting is a violation of rights”; “Kidnapping is a violation of rights”; “Stealing is a violation of rights.”
With only a rudimentary understanding of rights, he then asks himself what makes each of these actions a violation of rights. Of all these narrower truths, is there a fundamental truth? Is there a broader truth that explains what makes all of these actions into violations of rights? Is there something, beyond “common sense,” that can tell him categorically what does and does not belong to this class of rights-violations? Yes—“Force is a violation of rights.” All the narrower truths are simply forms of, derivatives of, this wider truth. The wider truth explains the narrower ones. It is because “Force violates rights” is true that “Shooting violates rights” is true.
The fundamental explains that shooting violates rights by telling us two things: 1) the criterion for rights-violations is force; 2) shooting, et al. are forms of force.
So within the class of truths about rights-violations, it is the one about force that is fundamental, because, as the widest member of that class, it subsumes and explains the other members of that class. Or, to put this in terms of propositions: In the class of propositions naming violations of rights, “Force violates rights” is fundamental while “Shooting violates rights” is derivative.
Note that while the fundamental explains the derivatives, it is an entirely new question as to how that fundamental is fully validated. “Force violates rights” explains that shooting, kidnapping, et al. are violations of rights because they are forms of force. But to understand why force itself violates rights, one must go back to the starting point for any issue of ethics/politics. One must go back to the idea that it is the concept of life that gives rise to the concept of value—and to the idea that life therefore is the standard of value—and to the idea that sustaining the value of his life requires man to take certain actions guided by his rational judgment—and to the idea that in order to take such actions when living in society he must have the right to do so—and then to the idea that force, because it prevents him from taking such life-sustaining action, violates his rights.
This process of hierarchical reduction provides the full validation for the conclusion that any form of force violates rights. Now, one can loosely call this a search for a fundamental. But strictly speaking, the relation between “life gives rise to value” and “the use of force violates rights” is not that of fundamental to derivative. It is very different from the relation between “the use of force violates rights” and “shooting violates rights.” “Shooting violates rights” is not subsumed by—is not a form of—“life gives rise to values.” In the precise meaning of the term, fundamentality explains, not why force violates rights, but that it is the act of force which makes shooting, along with all members of the class, into a violation of rights.
When it comes to rights-violations, the fundamental is relatively easy to identify. Let’s examine another, less obvious example. Every time you win a tennis match, you’re happy. You generalize and formulate the proposition: “Winning at tennis causes happiness.” You also see that there are other things in the class of “causes of happiness”—i.e., in the class of truths about causes of happiness. For instance, getting a raise makes you happy, as does solving a difficult problem, as does finding someone to love. And you ask yourself: “What makes all of these result in happiness?” Each one seems to have its own reason for causing happiness, but is there one unifying reason? Is there one fundamental truth here of which all the other, narrower truths are simply derivatives? Yes—“Achieving values causes happiness.” Winning at tennis, getting a raise, et al. are forms of achieving a value. They all lead to happiness because achieving a value leads to happiness.
Let’s return to the issue of freedom and prosperity. Here we have a number of causes of America’s, or any nation’s, prosperity. Each has its own explanation. The absence of “restrictive labor regulations” enables businesses to lower their costs, which allows them to produce more wealth. Letting people “keep a larger share of their earnings” means more wealth is controlled by private, productive individuals. Etc.
But is there one explanation that integrates all these causes? Is there a fundamental cause which subsumes all these narrower causes? Yes—freedom. Freedom is the absence of labor regulations. Freedom is the ability to keep more of your earnings in your own pocket. Freedom is all the conditions being described in the American Enterprise report. All the narrower causes of prosperity are simply forms of the wider, fundamental cause of prosperity. So in the class of “causes of prosperity,” freedom (qua cause of prosperity) subsumes and is fundamental to less restrictive labor regulations, et al. (qua causes of prosperity). Or, to put this in terms of propositions: In the class of propositions naming causes of prosperity, “Freedom causes prosperity” is fundamental while “less restrictive labor regulations, et al. cause prosperity” is derivative.
This is not to imply that prior to identifying the fundamental in this case, you have not discovered the concept of freedom. No, you do know that concept. You know certain things about it. But you do not fully grasp it. You do not fully understand its connection to a nation’s prosperity. You do not understand how freedom is the principle behind prosperity. The fundamental tells you that whatever causes a nation to be more prosperous, it does so qua form of freedom. It tells you that if achieving prosperity is your goal, any anti-freedom measures you implement—from tariffs to minimum-wage laws—conflict with that goal.
We’ve seen how we can have fundamental violations (of rights) and fundamental causes (of happiness and of prosperity). For another category, let’s look at fundamentality as it applies to the class of Objectivist virtues.
Someone starting to think about moral virtues may decide that, say, honesty is a virtue. It’s good—he concludes— not to lie to people. He may decide that independence is a virtue—it’s good to think for yourself. Maybe he comes up with some other virtues. But he does not yet know in principle what else does or does not belong in the class of virtues. When at some point he realizes that it rationality, the unswerving commitment to reality, is what underlies all virtues—when he realizes that all are simply forms of rationality—when he realizes that they are virtues because rationality is a virtue—then he grasps that rationality is the fundamental virtue and the others are derivatives. In terms of propositions, he grasps that within the class of propositions—“Honesty is a virtue,” “Independence is a virtue”—that name (legitimate) virtues, “Rationality is a virtue” is the fundamental because it names what makes a virtue a virtue.
With propositions too it is clear that fundamentality is a relationship among members of a class. It is meaningless to ask in isolation, “What is fundamental to winning tennis matches?” or “What is fundamental to the act of shooting someone?” It is only with respect to winning tennis matches qua cause of happiness—it is only with respect to the act of shooting qua violation of rights—that the issue of fundamentality can arise. It is only when we have a set of items in a class that we can ask what is fundamental to the members—i.e., what makes them into members of that class?
FUNDAMENTALS AND PRINCIPLES
When you learn about a class of items, you need to know what determines membership. If you learn that the causes of a nation’s prosperity are fewer labor regulations and a private banking system, or that moral virtues include honesty and independence, you need to know what else is to be included in the class. You have a separate reason why each member belongs, but you don’t have a reason why all of them belong. That is, you need to know what is the criterion for membership. You need to know what else does or does not belong. You need to know what in principle determines whether something is a cause of prosperity or a moral virtue.
The fundamental provides the criterion. That is, for the relevant class, the fundamental serves as the equivalent of a definition. It tells us what is to be admitted into that class—e.g., for something to qualify as a cause of prosperity, it must be some form of freedom; for something to qualify as a violation of rights, it must be some form of force. The fundamental gives us the broad principle underlying narrower truths.
Indeed, this is how we arrive at any principle. A principle is a fundamental generalization. It’s a generalization of narrower generalizations. You take such generalizations as “Shooting someone is a violation of his rights” and “Kidnapping someone is a violation of his rights”—and ask “What is the element in common among them?” You then discover that these are all forms of, these are all subsumed by, a wider generalization—“Using force is a violation of rights”—which is the overarching principle. That is the fundamental truth, of which the other, narrower truths are derivatives.
A principle names the broadest truth that is implicit in all the narrower truths, thereby explaining why the derivatives are what they are. This is why axioms are fundamentals. It is why, within the widest class of all—the class of truths as such—the most fundamental one is the Law of Identity. All truths—whether 2+2=4 or water boils at 212 degrees—are forms of, and are subsumed by, the axiom of “A is A.”
OTHER TYPES OF SUBSUMPTION
Let me re-emphasize that the fundamental-derivatives relationship is not between a class and its members, but among its members. Fundamentals and derivatives function only qua members of a specified class. A fundamental is needed when we have identified a class but don’t fully know what makes the members into members. It is needed when the description of the class—”violations of rights” or “causes of happiness”—is not sufficient to identify all that belong as members. The fundamental provides that information by telling us what unites the members and what thereby serves as the criterion for membership.
Accordingly, while fundamentality is a type of subsumption, there are many other types of subsumption that do not involve fundamentals. A genus subsumes its species, but is not fundamental to its species. We ordinarily have no problem knowing what is to be included in the genus. For example, the genus “man-made objects” requires no further explanation of what does and does not belong there. The genus clearly names what qualifies as species. (And there is no widest member within this class that subsumes the others.) The same for, say, the genus “residents of Florida.”
For concepts, it is the definition that identifies what does and does not qualify as units. So we know that the concept “animal” subsumes only organisms that possess consciousness and locomotion. There is no point to the question “What makes something a member of the class ‘animal’?” And there is no sense to the question, “What is the fundamental animal?” “Animal” subsumes “dog,” but is not fundamental to “dog.” With respect to the relation between a concept (a class) and its units (its members), there is no meaning to, no need for and no possibility of a fundamental.
(Of course, there are categories for which the criterion for inclusion is not simply unknown, but non-existent. The “ideology of conservatism,” for instance, consists of a hash of non-integratable items and should not even be regarded as a class. Obviously, no uniting fundamental can be found there.)
So I would, tentatively, define a fundamental as: “the widest among the members of a class, which explains their membership in that class.”
“WIDER” EQUALS “DEEPER”
The fundamental is always the widest member of a class, whether of distinguishing characteristics or of propositions. By giving us a wider explanation, the fundamental gives us a deeper explanation. Why?
First, let’s consider what “deep” means in this context. Keep in mind that we are using a metaphor, taken from the physical world. Starting from the top of a 50-story skyscraper, for example, the deeper down one goes, the greater the dependency becomes. At the very bottom, the foundation physically supports the entire building—i.e., more rests on, more depends on, the foundation than on the 49th floor.
When we use that metaphor in regard to fundamentality, it means an epistemological, not a physical, dependency. A fundamental is something on which many other things depend. The wider a characteristic or truth is, the more dependent on it are other characteristics or truths within a given class.
For example, much more depends on the proposition “Force violates rights” than on the proposition “Shooting violates rights”; the latter covers relatively few instances of violations of rights, whereas the former covers them all. Likewise, more depends on rationality than on sock-darning as a distinguishing characteristic of man. The fundamental names this epistemological dependency—the dependency of the derivatives on the fundamental.
When you see men using plows, you know something about man as distinguished from animals. When you integrate that action with the use of power saws, pneumatic drills and bulldozers, and identify the ability to make complex tools as a distinguishing characteristic of man, you have a deeper understanding of what distinguishes man from animals. When you make a wider integration with man’s ability to build rocket ships, solve mathematical problems and invent cures for diseases, and you identify all these as forms of rationality—you have then grasped the widest and the deepest explanation of what distinguishes man from animals.
By subsuming everything under “Man is rational,” you know the most about man—not just about the many other manifestations of rationality, but about your starting point of plowing fields. By widening your knowledge about plowing—by integrating it with the other characteristics that distinguish man—you come to know the deepest reason why plowing distinguishes man. We go beyond a shallow explanation of man’s distinctiveness to a deeper explanation of it. We understand that it’s not merely plowing–or tool-making or language-using–that distinguishes man, but something wider and thus deeper: rationality. We understand that what really makes them distinguishing characteristics of man is the fact that they are all forms of rationality.
The same is true for propositions. Take, for example, the propositions about violations of rights. Only the widest truth about rights-violations captures the deepest truth about rights-violations. When you know only that shooting your neighbor violates his rights, that’s true but narrow and superficial. But when you know that what makes shooting your neighbor a rights-violation is the same thing that makes kidnapping him or stealing his money or defaming him a violation of his rights—namely, the use of force—you then have a deeper knowledge.
This wider integration gets to the root of why shooting is a rights-violation. It is not simply the act of kidnapping or of stealing or of defaming that violates rights. You grasp that it is any act qua act of force that makes it a violation of rights. Just as you grasp that it is field-plowing, or sock-darning, qua rationality that makes it a distinguishing characteristic of man.
Let’s consider one last proposition–the proposition that anti-Semitism is an evil idea. Most people can readily understand the truth of that. And if you make a wider integration with racism, and conclude that evaluating a person because he is Jewish is the same evil as evaluating a person because he is black, you have acquired a deeper understanding of why anti-Semitism is evil. If you then go wider still and integrate it with, say, communism and fascism, you see that what all these evil ideas have in common is collectivism. You see that the fundamental evil of anti-Semitism, and racism, is that they are forms of collectivism.
The deepest explanation, therefore, of why anti-Semitism and racism are evil, is that collectivism is evil. It’s the explanation that it is fundamentally qua form of collectivism that anti-Semitism and racism belong in the class of evil ideas. That is the deepest explanation—because it is the widest.
When we say that a derivative depends on its fundamental, it means that the derivative cannot contradict the fundamental. One cannot declare that sock-darning distinguishes man from animals while denying that rationality distinguishes man from animals. One cannot declare that shooting violates rights while denying that force violates rights. One cannot declare that socialism is wrong while denying that altruism is wrong. Because derivatives are simply forms of their fundamental, they cannot be upheld if their fundamental is rejected. This is the sense in which a fundamental makes possible its derivatives.
This epistemological dependency does not pertain to concretes. It does not pertain to the physical dependency that the floors of a skyscraper have on the foundation. Rather, it refers to the epistemological dependency created when one thing subsumes another. (Again, one can loosely refer to a building’s foundation as being fundamental to the floors above it. But that is a different sense of the term. It is not the core meaning of fundamentality.)
Fundamentality says that A is dependent on B because A is a form of B—not that it is an effect of B, not that it is a part of B, but that it is a form of B. Being “a form of” is an epistemological description: honesty (as a virtue) is a form of—a type of—rationality (as a virtue); winning a tennis match (as a cause of happiness) is a form of achieving a value (as a cause of happiness). By contrast, the floors of a skyscraper are not forms of, or subsumed by, the foundation.
The fundamental subsumes its derivatives. But subsumption is not the same as inclusion. A house includes a roof and a floor; it does not subsume a roof and a floor. A roof or a floor is not a form of “house.” Subsumption is an epistemological term; inclusion is metaphysical.
CONCLUSION
Without identifying a fundamental, we would have to confront a motley assortment of items within a class, with no idea of what the underlying explanation is or what else belongs there.
Without identifying freedom as the fundamental cause of prosperity, for example, we could name isolated causes but nothing further. We would have only a collection of items—each with its own particular connection to prosperity—but no idea of why they all lead to prosperity. We would not know what principle to adopt in pursuit of the goal of prosperity. But once we identify the fundamental, we are able to integrate the seemingly diverse items. Instead of confronting a laundry list of causes of prosperity, we reduce them to one fundamental, all-encompassing cause: freedom. Similarly, instead of a laundry list of rights possessed by the individual, we reduce them to one fundamental right: the right to life. Instead of a laundry list of ideas that led to the rise of Nazi totalitarianism, we reduce them to one fundamental idea: a philosophy of unreason.
That is the role—the indispensable role—that fundamentality plays in one’s thinking.