Reason

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[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions being developed by Max Seifert, within the context of the Conceptual clarification about "Information, Knowledge and Philosophy", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.

Teacher's Comments: This article requires the corrections indicated below:
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Reason

Reason, also commonly referred to as rationality [you cannot state this because the latter is the quality or state of being rational, i.e. of being based on or agreable to reason. Thus it presuposses reason, but cannot be considered the same, as well as pragmatism is not the same that practical application, or beeing agreeable to art is not the same that art itself], is the ability to process information with logic [processing information is probably your interpretation more than what is considered under rationality. We can process information, but is not only information what is used to come to a conclussion. I may just play with my previous knowledge, including the general principle I take for granted, to derive a conclussion without any information processing], coming up with a conclusion and then the possibility to act based upon the conclusion. (Jäncke, Wikipedia, 2021)

It is the opposite of drawing a conclusion based upon feelings, desires or instinct. However, in Philosophy there are several ways of understanding reason or rather reasoning. The term of intuitive reasoning describes the process of a way of developing ideas based on intuition. It is a subconscious way of reasoning which you cannot distinctively link to a priori or a posteriori way of reasoning. This term was invented by Aristotle. [This is wrong in several senses. Aristotle used greek terms instead of the one from which reason is directly derived, ratio. This was first used by Cicero to traslate the greek logos, wich means "reason" as well as discourse. Secondly, the term logos had a quite long tradition at the time of Aristotle (Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato...). Plato defined several concepts, different than logos, that later on were important in the development of the undestading of ratio/"reason". Indeed it was in the Middle ages that ratio received a more specialised sense, translating the greek terms dianoia (or discursive reason) in oposition to nous (which in turn was taken by the undestanding of intellectus from which intelligence is derived). In the narrow sense of ]

Another way of approaching reason is the logical approach. You can split that into inductive-, deductive-, and abductive reasoning. This refers to the classical logic [abduction was actually proposed in the 19th century by Peirce son it cannot be considered as a part of classical logic which is mostly concerned with deductive reason more than inductive or abductive reason. In these you cannot conclude with necessity...]. (Emmanuel Lévinas, 2021)

You can understand reason as a way of solving a mathematical problem e.g., drawing a conclusion or developing ideas [this statement needs to be reviewed]. This way of defining reason was invented or commonly referred to by René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes or even Kant in some sense, because he developed this idea even further and built up a complete moral compass based on reason in his major works (Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of practical Reason) [the 'moral compass' is rather developed in his Critique of practical reason and other ethical works]. Reason is one, if not the central term of the whole enlightenment. (West, Philosophize This!, 2021)

Reason in the Enlightenment

Kant uses the term "reason" in a way of describing the process of thinking and drawing conclusions. In the essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment “, he links it directly to the definition of the whole period of enlightenment.

The idea of reason in the enlightenment is, that reason is a tool of the human mind that can find universal truths and is contradictory to the concept of believing and religion. The school of enlightenment rather emphasizes a reason driven religion. This concept however is not in conflict with the existence of God. Indeed many Philosophers, like Descartes and Spinoza, conclude that God exists (Descartes ontological Argument). [The phrase between parenthesis needs to be more explicit. The readon may not know what you are meaning]

Reason is in the philosophical school of rationalism the bottom pillar of truth [it is not so easy to define rationalism as philosophical schools, because it is composed by several different phisolophical systems as cartesianism, spinozism, etc, but sometimes it is because you're right in the consitency with respect to sevel aspects, in particular the belief that the general principles that enable us to understand reality are accesible to reason, to the 'lights' of anyone. From these principles we can deductively derive any particular statement, ensuring its fully correctness]. The world is reasonably structured, so knowledge can only be found by using the concept of reason, not by empirical data [more than using the concept of reason itself, the general principles that are accesible to reason]. The founder of the philosophy, which is entirely based on reason is Rene Descartes [not entirely, he also need to put the idea that god (the only independet substance, since thinking and matter are created substances, is good and therefore doen't want to decive us. In other terms it is god that somehow permits in the onset the accesibility of general principles to reason]. He bases his philosophy on the realization that he thinks, therefore he exists (cogito ergo sum). (Peter, 2021) [If this work of Peters is the support of what you stated in the previous sentence the intext reference, i.e. "(Peters, 2021)" should be placed before the period]

Reason in the continental Rationalism

The school of rationalism had three very prominent thinkers, first Descartes. He not only established the foundation of modern philosophy, but he also was the founder of the school of rationalism. Then there were two other very prominent thinkers who applied Descartes work to different parts of philosophy.

Baruch de Spinoza applies the ideas of Descartes in order to build up a complete ethic system which is structured as a mathematical textbook. He starts with an small set of definitions and axioms -following the Euclidian model- from which he derives a large number of propositions and corolaries, which intend to then act as guidelines for behavior (Peter, 2021). This is indeed a common trait of rationalists: the only way you can achieve knowledge or arrive at universal truths is through pure reason.

The third very prominent thinker in the school of rationalism is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who can be considered the last universal scholar (Zimmer, 2021). He was the last scholar that was the spearhead of all sciences in every way and knew nearly everything about each discipline of science or philosophy. He was among the most prominent mathematicians of his time, but also was the climax of rationalism. His belief was, that you could eventually boil down philosophy into a mathematical equation. That means, if a philosopher had done some work or has proven a fact, you could tell if it was right or wrong, if you sat down and calculated it. You could then determine if the philosopher was right or wrong, when there were no flaws or mistakes in his formulations (West, Philosophize This!, 2021).

Reason is the base of this school of philosophy because you could not solve these kinds of specific philosophical formulations without applying it. The essence of rationalism was that you could only arrive at a definitive answer of a problem, no matter whether it is an ethical one - as in Spinoza - or a philosophical argument -as in Leibniz' intention - by solving it rationally, i.e. first finding the general principles required and then deductively probing the solution of the problem.

Descartes started by laying the foundation of rationalism which was later referred to by Immanuel Kant as a priori, i.e. before the result of any experience. The importance of the statement "cogito ergo sum" is that you can only rely on the fact that you exist. You cannot determine whether you sleep or you are awake. You cannot determine through logic or experience that you exist or not, but by purely thinking you must exist. If you would like to compare it to mathematics this would be the definition that 1+1 = 2 (West, Philosophize This!, 2021). After Descartes laid out this foundation, many thinkers like Baruch de Spinoza, Leibniz and Immanuel Kant build their house i.e., their philosophy, to speak through a metaphor on this foundation that he laid out.

Reason in the conflict between English empiricism and continental Rationalism

Reason probably was the main subject in this battle between these two schools of thinking in the 17th and early 18th century [this sentence had two verbs so I have corrected it]. While rationalists thought that you could only arrive at universal truths by using reason, empiricists only relied on their senses in order to arrive at universal truths.

The most prominent thinkers of the English empiricism were David Hume, John Locke and George Berkeley. The main pillar of the philosophy of English empiricists was that the only way to arrive at universal truths - if there was any - was through the senses. For empiricists, reason is the way of linking together thoughts and making sense out of them. But the only way of even getting ideas, which then can be linked and then can lead to universal truths, rely on the capacity of your senses.

One of the most quoted and probably the most important figure in this discussion is David Hume. He completely opposes the foundation of Descartes and states that his theories are beyond the capacity of the human understanding. David Hume states: “Reason is wholly inactive and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience or a sense of morals.”

You can compare the difference between rationalism and empiricism in order to arrive at universal truths, like the difference between theoretical and experimental Physics in order to prove a fundamental law of physics. I will take the example of gravity in order to make it clearer. Empiricists go with the experimental scientists and try to come to proof this law by experimenting and close observation in order to arrive at the conclusion: Mass attracts other mass and there is the proof of hundreds and thousands of experiments and observations.

Rationalists come from the other end: they support the theoretical scientists who try to proof gravity by building up an equation, like the force of attraction between two points of Mass: F = G m1m2/r2. As we can, it can lead to the exact same conclusion by two very different approaches. Nevertheless, Hume asks: how can you even come up with any idea of how to approach a mathematical problem without any form of experience? Interestingly, the conflict between empiricists and rationalists can be traced back to Plato’s "Theory of Forms".

Leibniz attacks the approach of the empiricists by stating that you canot rely on your senses because they do not grasp the nature of a thing. The senses only give you information about instances of the nature of a thing. This refers to Plato’s “Theory of Forms “, who stated that there are two worlds: The world of perfect forms and the world of appearances in which nothing perfect exists. (Peter, 2021) [For Plato it is the form what really exists]

What does that mean? That means that if you see for example a tree in the real world, you can only get the idea what the perfect form of a tree is, but in the world of forms the perfect tree exists. Plato further states that in the world that we can see and grasp, there are only inferior copies of forms and ideas which are only perfect in "the world of forms".

The basic idea of "the world of forms" concludes the argument between the empiricists and rationalists by probably the most important philosopher in this period, Immanuel Kant. He tries to solve the conflict between the empiricists and the rationalists by connecting both theories together in one of his main works "The critique of pure reason". He sets himself the task to combine these two theories and link them together [this statement is the same than the former one]. You can interpret Kant's whole work as a process of linking empiricism and rationalism together [what he does is probing on the one hand that empirical knowledge requires the a prioris of perception (sensible experience), while on the other, that reason alone cannot securely know about matterial reality, its objects are transcendetal to the subject of knowledge, who may be willing to know them but are ultimately out of reach. This conclusion represents the toehold of idealism, i.e. the only realm to which reason can attain clear and distinct knowledge is the subject world, the wolrd ideas, which is not to be confused with Plato's ideal worls that the philosopher is trying to reach].

Reason in the Philosophy of Kant

For Immanuel Kant the whole discussion between empiricists and rationalists is not that important, because for him there is not an opossition [I changed "contrast" by opossition, because the contrast exist, though not in opossition, i.e. that one excludes the other]. There are two views with respect the achievement of truths: A) to use pure reason, and B) relying on the senses. They are not contradictory, though a posteriori knowledge can only be contingent and particular, whereas a posteriori can be universal and necessary. Thus universal truths are only accesible to reason.

In “The Critique of Pure Reason“ he explains his approach (Williams, 2021). He acknowledges the fact stated above. Empiricists and rationalists do not contradict each other, rather they can cooperate in the development of a better understanding of reality. Reason plays the role of making sense out of the data empirically acquired.

The point is, Kant defines reason as a tool in order to link, process and put information that we experienced into context, so that we then can make a judgement about reality. He refutes Descartes argument, that you cannot rely on your senses to build up knowledge because it requires certainty and that certainty about the external world is beyond the reach of empirical evidence. In that sense, Kant agrees that empirical inquiry cannot attain universal and necessary knowledge, but it is possible to achieve contingent and particular knowledge.

We can illustrate this with an example. One can dream to be a millionaire who owns a luxury villa, three children, etc, but when they wake up alone in an small apartment can instantaneously judge the experiences they had past night in the light of his a priori ideas of spatial apprenhesion, property, familyhood, etc. The Dream they had was clearly untrue, because the household you own is small and they only have two kids and no trait of luxury. The subject essentially checks if the dream was true or not. If the dream only exits in the realm of possibility but not in the one of reality and sensory experience (articulated by the a priori knowledge of perception), then it is possible to conclude that the dream was not true [Sorry for having violented the example, but the impersonal style and gender neutral is preferible, and a slight modification was required to reflect Kant's viewpoint]. Therefore, Kant essentially states that there is no real flaw in trusting your senses, because you have the tool of reason in order to judge constantly if what you get presented by your senses can be true or not (Peter, 2021).

As it can be clearly seen, Kant really tries to unify the principles of empiricism with the principles of rationalism by firstly revoking both main arguments against each other, then taking the most essential parts out of both and recombining them to his understanding of what reason is and what it does. [This method however has some flaws, if you try to scientifically prove that the earth is not flat despite the fact of your everyday experience that you can’t see how the earth curves at the horizon and that it is a fundamental problem of our perspective that we can’t see the earth from space.] [What I put into brackets is wrong because the concept of plane involves the whole space, and we can find probes to check whether it is really so using ortogonal and parallel lines. That's what Eratosthenes did in the 2nd century B.C. to determine the radius of the earth which is clearly incompatible with its planitude. In kantian terms, Eratosthenes, used the a priori knowledge of spatial bodies to check its sphericity]

For Kant there must be another way to achieve truths of the universal and necessary kind. To that purpose he developed the concept of transcendental Ideas, "ideas of pure reason". They are are purely based upon reason and logic, but since the latter only enables to derive truths from principles but not the other way around, he speaks of reason as the "faculty of principles". He states that fundamental principles cannot be grasped by experience, referring to some mathematical examples to make his point clear. For instance, the idea that "a straight line is the shortest distance between two points" is an Axiom of mathematics one cannot grasped by simply looking at this line. One can view some examples of points joined by straight lines, but one not see that it is truly, universally and necessarily the case (Peter, 2021).

Limits of Reason

(West, Philosophize This!, 2021) [You shouldn't use an intext reference when there is no statemt of yours to be supported]

Kant’s View of the limits of reason

Kant states that the limits of reason is that one cannot ever fully understand the thing itself. This interestingly connects back to Plato’s view of the world of perfect forms and that the subject can never observe with their eyes the thing itself. Only reason can understand the non-phenomenal reality, which he calls the noumenon (derived from the Greek νoούμενον, used by Plato to name the ideal forms); whereas the thing-in-itsef (Ding an sich, in German) is unknowable to both sense and reason.

Limits of reason in religion

A fundamental limit of reason in religion is that reason cannot fully understand or grasp God and God's doings, because it fails to show the necessity of a creator that is infinitely perfect. To that purpose Kant reviews and criticise the tradional speculative arguments, showing its insufficiency.

This idea that a infinitely perfect cannot be understood by reason shows up in several philosophical systems (West, Philosophize This!, 2021). [I have deleted the reference to the similarities with Plato's world of forms and subsequent platonic approaches because there's a fundamantal difference that operates in Kants criticism: for Plato God is necessarily limited, whereas in Kant is fundamentaly unlimited]

Kierkegaard and the limit of reason and rationality

For Kierkegaard one and the most important limits of reason and reasonable behavior is being a human. As a human he states, you cannot only act purely based on reason, because life is not reasonable. His essential Idea is, that if a human would only try to act based on reason, they would just be paralyzed and unable to act at all. The Point he is trying to make can be illustrated in the following example: Imagine going into the supermarket with the intention to be fully rational, i.e. deciding in the benefit of the maximal good. To that purpose you would avoid buying products from countries in which people live in hunger or are enslaved, also products that endanger the climate, or that significantly harm animals, whose package produce too much waste, etc, etc. Probably you could never come home with a basket full of groceries. However, since you need enough food for the the week, the time you have is limited and the information about the products you have access to is limited, at the end you are basically bound to act using a bounded rationality, otherwise you would eventually starve. It is therefore existance itself that preceeds reason in our decision-making. Kirkegaard was indeed a first philosopher of the existentialism movement to which also Nietzsche, Unamuno, Heidegger, Sastre, Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty among others belong to.

Pascal and the reasons of the heart

Blaise Pascal (French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, contemporary of Descartes) took another approach in lining out the limits of reason. Though in mathematical or physical inquiry he strongly supported reason, he also held a radical theological position, stating that the acquistion or support of genuine religious faith is impossible in principle for reason alone. According to Pascal, genuine religious faith is a a pure gift from God. As stated in his famous sentece, “the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know”, therefore, there is a realm of heart, whose truths exceeds the reach of reason (Lilley, 2021). This sums up his critique to the rationalists who were very prominent in his time, particularly Descartes and Malebranche.

Reason and its consequences on the world

The Enlightenment had a great effect on society, the Church lost power over the average person and in contrast to earlier times more people based their decisions on reason, rather than on religion; science accelerated, the industrial revolution began, and with it great achievements. This had a drastic effect on society, while the factory owners got richer and richer, the larger portion of society got poorer and rather frustrated about the achievements, Reason and science has brought them.

Out of this frustration in science, reason and ongoing revolutions in continental Europe, namely the French revolution, a counter movement to the enlightenment started, the romanticism.

Romanticism turned against the rationalistic view of the world in these times. In the center there were very famous artists and authors, like Caspar David Friedrich, Joseph Karl Benedikt Freiherr von Eichendorff and first and foremost Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They turned against the concept of reason as hegemonic faculty, they explicitly did not want to base their decisions on reason alone, preferring intuition and emotion (Wikipedia, 2021).

Reason: Neuroscience

(Jäncke, Youtube, 2021)

Reason is the ability to recognize your surroundings and yourself, understand external factors, process them and conclude and act upon it. The term of reason not only applies in the dimensions of sensing, but also in the dimensions of feeling, human interaction and moral and ethical decision making. Reason is one of the central factors in order to define human intelligence.

Bibliography:

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