Confidence in Reason

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Confidence in Reason

Please be reasonable! Let us reason together. There was no reason for that. What do we mean by these common expressions?

Ignoring the fact that these are generally just common exclamations by most of us that are meaningful only in their emotional content; what is the source of our indication of reliance on ‘reason’?

Western philosophy emerged in the sixth century BC along the Ionian coast. A small group of scientist-philosophers began writing about their attempts to develop “rational” accounts regarding human experience. These early Pre-Socratic thinkers thought that they were dealing with fundamental elements of nature.

It is natural for humans to seek knowledge. In the “Metaphysics” Aristotle wrote “All men by nature desire to know”.

The attempt to seek knowledge presupposes that the world unfolds in a systematic pattern and that we can gain knowledge of that unfolding. We assume many things because our ‘gut’ tells us that: 1) the world makes systematic sense, and we can gain knowledge of it: 2) every particular thing is a kind of thing; 3) every entity has an “essence” or “nature,” that is, a collection of properties that makes it the kind of thing it is and that is the causal source of its natural behavior.

We may not want our friends to know this fact but we are all metaphysicians. We, in fact, assume that things have a nature thereby we are led by the metaphysical impulse to seek knowledge at various levels of reality.

Now back to ‘confidence in reason’. I guess the Greeks were the first to systematize our belief that reason can be an important factor in making life better; that reason can provide us with a means to convince others that this particular way is the better way of reaching the desired goal; a mutual confidence in reason becomes one of life’s most important goals.

Why a ‘mutual confidence in reason’ becomes one of life’s most important goals? Because of the disaster to all of us that is derived from an intellectual distrust of reason.

I think that one of the important duties we all have is to help others formulate a confidence in reason.

I think that we can find in our self many times that a confidence in reason is displaced by a belief that is not grounded in reason. Examples might be faith in charismatic leaders, faith in ‘authority’, faith in some social group, faith in our ‘gut’, faith in fate, faith in technology, faith in unanalyzed experience, faith in someone because s/he is a successful maker of money, etc.

I think that we place far too much confidence in irrational opinions? Do you agree?

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the fallacy of induction proves it is not reasonable to believe in reason.

“you’ll believe as you want to believe”

-Imp

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coberst -

I think that depends on who you mean by “we”.

I just can’t sign on to anything like this. It simply becomes nonsensical to assign a goal to “life”. What is “life”?

I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but any such formulation - that “life” is some uniform entity, is purely religious. I cannot see how it relates to “reason”.

My “life’s” goals are my goals. This changes everything.

I think you are doomed to confusion - to Aquinas.

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What is this fallacy of induction?

If the fallacy of induction is "“you’ll believe as you want to believe” then I would say that the fallacy of induction is the thoughts of the majority and my question is how we, you and I, can change such an unfortunate attitude; assuning you do not entertain this view yourself.

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A couple days ago I joined in the thread of a guy I thought, after reading his posts for weeks, was a pillar of the philosophical community. Right before my eyes that image disintegrated into a pile of philosophical dust when he suggested the possibility some sort of religious consideration might be inborn in our species. I wanted to point out the risk of using the word “religious” in conjunction with his profound observation but I made such a disastrous entrance to the thread the clean up became the topic of conversation. Though the conversation became an unexpected pleasure we never did get back to the original observation. I hope I can avoid a similar disaster here.

I believe trying to impose religious goals on life is a recipe for self-destruction. However, in my most optimistic flights of fantasy I suggest there are 2 possible “goals”, or more appropriately, 2 possible end points for humanity. One is self-destruction and the other is self-realization. When I soar into more rarefied air I go on to suggest that, since we all believe in laws that govern nature, without going anywhere near a discussion of their source, it should not be beyond the bounds of reason to consider that there is similarly a “Law of Human Nature” that governs every aspect of our lives and allows us with just reason, to predict outcomes. Just before I run out of oxygen I finally suggest if we don’t soon discard our “irrational opinions” and beliefs and become “grounded in reason” we will achieve self-destruction.

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I still don’t get your point about that. Did you think I was suggesting that we should believe in God? That was some distance from my point. It was a socio-historico-biological point, not a religious one.

Whatever.

Okay - there are endpoints for humanity. If you wish to assume this, you are free to fly with your fancy wharever it will take you. Have fun.

Everyone likes a good story.

But there are arguments for reason that don’t depend upon a convenient fiction. That you choose to make it all up as you go along is up to you.

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DEB wrote

Hi DEB,

I take issue with your statement, “…since we all believe in laws that govern nature…”

Laws are products of the human imagination for the purpose of modeling, or describing nature. To say that laws govern nature is to place the cart before the horse. No natural entity consults a law in order to decide how it ought to behave. Anthropocentricism is an insidious bewitchment for which we ought to remain ever-vigiliant.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that existent entities required laws in order to govern them. These laws would themselves be existent entities, in which case they would require a set of meta-laws in order to govern them. And these meta-laws would require meta-meta-laws, … ad infinitum.

Laws are (generally imperfect) mental constructs created by cognizant beings for the purpose of describing, ordering and modeling our observations. Not only is nature not governed by our natural laws, nature is unaware of the fact that we’ve even created these laws.

I would mention a book that I recently read dealing with an allied question. I wonder if you would find Teleological Realism, by Scott Sehon, interesting? If so, here’s a brief review of it.

Best wishes,
Michael

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no, I have many threads on the subject, the best one is in a dialouge between membrain and myself

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … sc&start=0

-Imp

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Hi Coberst,

“Superstition sets the world in flames; philosophy quenches them.” Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique

When Voltaire wrote his philosophical dictionary in the eighteenth century, philosophy was commonly taken to include so-called “natural philosophy”; what we today think of as science. The above quote is typical of the Enlightenment uber-exhuberence for rationality. It came at a time when human thought was thoughly mired in superstition. For example, even a nominally rational man as Isaac Newton still believed in black magic. In fact, Newton is thought to have ruined his health breathing the exhaust from a fire that he kept in his backroom - a place he and his servant used to brew up various “magic potions”.

The illumination for the escape-path from the jungle of superstition - an affliction that afflicted even learned men of that time - was correctly seen by enthusiasts of the Enlightenment to be composed primarily of reason. That said, we ought to excuse Voltaire for what might today appear an “irrational exhuberence” for rationality. Even though we’re far from being “out of the woods” of superstition, these days we tend to be more circumspect in expressing praise for unadulterated rationality.

Rational men are rightly guided by reason, and yet reason is not what sets a rational man on his pathway. Reason is primarily a tool that we employ to reach goals set in place, for the most part, by other processes. I suspect this revelation might have prompted G.K. Chesterton’s well-known quip.

“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

Which is half-correct. Madness may be viewed as a loss of mental equilibrium. Lacking all reason, or lacking everything but reason, are two diametrically opposed extremes of such a loss.

“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s
no disputing that, but reason is only reason and satisfies only
the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole
life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the little itches.”
Dostoyevsky, Notes From The Underground

Reason is a fine thing indeed. And yet it’s the “little itches” that elicit life’s sorrows and joy.

Dear Santa,

I want it all.

Sincerely,
Mikey

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DEB says–“Just before I run out of oxygen I finally suggest if we don’t soon discard our “irrational opinions” and beliefs and become “grounded in reason” we will achieve self-destruction.”

I could not have said it better. The big question I have is how can 5% of the population, who is convinced of this conclusion, convince a large part of the other 95% that such are the facts?

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Pole…

The following is a post I made that, I think, speaks to your thoughts.

“All Men by Nature Desire to Know”

When written history began five thousand years ago humans had already developed a great deal of knowledge. Much of that knowledge was of a very practical nature such as how to use animal skins for clothing, how to weave wool, how to hunt and fish etc. A large part of human knowledge was directed toward how to kill and torture fellow humans. I guess things never really change all that much.

In several parts of the world civilizations developed wherein people learned to create laws and to rule vast numbers of people. Some measure of peace and stability developed but there was yet no means for securing the people from their rulers. I guess things never really change all that much

Almost everywhere priests joined rulers in attempts to control the population. Despite these continual wars both of external and internal nature the human population managed to flourish. Egypt was probably one of the first long lasting and stable civilizations to grow up along the large rivers. Egypt survived almost unchanged for three thousand years. This success is attributed to its geographical location that gave it freedom from competition and fertile lands that were constantly replenished by the river overflowing its banks and thus depositing new fertile soil for farming.

Western philosophy emerged in the sixth century BC along the Ionian coast. A small group of scientist-philosophers began writing about their attempts to develop “rational” accounts regarding human experience. These early Pre-Socratic thinkers thought that they were dealing with fundamental elements of nature.

It is natural for humans to seek knowledge. In the “Metaphysics” Aristotle wrote “All men by nature desire to know”.

The attempt to seek knowledge presupposes that the world unfolds in a systematic pattern and that we can gain knowledge of that unfolding. Cognitive science identifies several ideas that seem to come naturally to us and labels such ideas as “Folk Theories”.

The Folk Theory of the Intelligibility of the World
The world makes systematic sense, and we can gain knowledge of it.

The Folk Theory of General Kinds
Every particular thing is a kind of thing.

The Folk Theory of Essences
Every entity has an “essence” or “nature,” that is, a collection of properties that makes it the kind of thing it is and that is the causal source of its natural behavior.

The consequences of the two theories of kinds and essences is:

The Foundational Assumption of Metaphysics
Kinds exist and are defined by essences.

We may not want our friends to know this fact but we are all metaphysicians. We, in fact, assume that things have a nature thereby we are led by the metaphysical impulse to seek knowledge at various levels of reality.

Cognitive science has uncovered these ideas they have labeled as Folk Theories. Such theories when compared to sophisticated philosophical theories are like comparing mountain music with classical music. Such theories seem to come naturally to human consciousness.

The information comes primarily from “Philosophy in the Flesh” and wku.edu/~jan.garrett/302/folkmeta.htm

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Poly…says "“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

I can agree with this statement, I think only a madman would disagree with it.

You go on to say–“Rational men are rightly guided by reason, and yet reason is not what sets a rational man on his pathway. Reason is primarily a tool that we employ to reach goals set in place,”

I would say that you have high lighted the problem. If reason is not the source for establishing the goal then what is, except perhaps some religious dogma. I have no confidence in relgious dogma.

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Polemarchus wrote:

I am apparently completely confused so help me understand. For my entire life I have accepted as fact that there is a “law of gravity” that “governs” the actions of falling bodies which allows us to predict what will happen if we drop an apple. Are you now telling me I should not believe in that “law” because it is “the product of the human imagination”? I am up on my roof awaiting your reply.

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I am trying but apparently I have trouble choosing the right words.

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Thank you for your reply, Coberst.

You ended your introduction by asking

My reply was directed toward that question. Without supposing that you would have us abandon our non-rational virtues, my reponse is a caution that a desire to cultivate a monoculture of rationality is no roadmap to Utopia. On the contrary, I suspect it would lead us rapidly in quite the other direction. I assign a high value to my ability to reason, and yet I place higher marks still on an innate sense of love and compassion, of which Pascal remarked

“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

Best,
Michael

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A popular adage goes something like this “I cannot argue down a conviction that has not been argued up.” It is impossible for me to use reason to convince someone who is without confidence in reason that they should have confidence in reason.

An adult without confidence in reason must start the effort to study reason before they can gain a confidence in reason. Perhaps that is impossible also. Perhaps it is the case that an adult without a confidence in reason will never have confidence in reason.

I suspect that 95% of the adults in the US have no confidence in reason and if my logic is correct they never will have that confidence. If that does not depress 5% of the population then nothing will. Perhaps it will delight the other 95%.

Further thought leads me to modify that statement. The 95% without confidence in reason do in fact have some confidence in reason. They do recognize that as an instrument to gain a goal reason is necessary.

What can we say about the 95% and reason? I guess we can say that they often have confidence in reason but that confidence is restricted to a limited aspect of life.

It appears that many of this 95% think that their heart or their gut are better at making judgments than is their reason.

Perhaps I should say what I think reason is. Reason is a process of conceptualization and inference. We have the ability to conceptualize, which means we can organize matters so that we can then draw inference from that organization. What the heart and gut does I do not know.

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If the heart can have reasons then reason can have heart. I think that is what we call wisdom; but I am not sure.

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coberst,

I see an additional rock in the road of reason. I would suggest that 95% of the folks think they are ALWAYS being reasonable, in that they either don’t understand, or ignore their irrationality. Sorting out rational cognitive constructs from affective acting out is a blinders on proposition for the 95%. We’re a pretentious animal…

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If we could just articulate the reason all of us are being somewhat unreasonable we might have a chance.

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Hello Deb,

Do come down from the roof. :wink:

I’m not telling you what you should or should not believe. I’m only telling you why I disagree with something that you wrote.

I believe in the existence of physical laws in much the same way that I believe in the existence of any idea. Laws are perfectly real ideas. By our speaking, or thinking them into existence they become part of the world’s furniture. However, I’m saying that the physical world doesn’t learn physics in order to know what to do with itself. People learn physics, but stars or subatomic particles haven’t the slightest clue what physics is about. Neither do they first exist and then look about them for hints for how they ought to behave. Nor is a certain behavior pre-programmed into them. Physical laws are not, somehow, stuffed into things. A positron, for example, is not programmed how to behave when it happens to bang into a photon. No behavior is preset in the colliding particles, rather, the resulting action supervenes on them.

Cheers,
Michael