What is reason?

Gregory

Hello,

To use the two examples used by David Hume, suppose there were raised persons who never
saw liquid. (I guess we should say they were kept hydrated somehow) And suppose they
never saw fire or encountered a really hot object. (Maybe they were also kept inside
for their whole lives so far). When they are introduced a large body of water, could they use their reasoning skills alone to know that they couldn't breath underneath it, or would they have to test this hypothesis out first? Likewise, would they know upon seeing fire that it's hotter the closer you get to it, or would they have to find this out empirically?

Descartes had the example of the oar in water. He thought pure reason could know the bending of the oar is an optical illusion before the sense of touch tested this hypothesis out. My personal example is a mirror. Upon first seeing one's reflection, can reason immediately know "this is what I look like to others" or must he first ask others if the reflection accurately portrays him?

This get's into the question of what exactly reason is. (If there are aliens and they have abilities in this area we know nothing about, what can we learn from them about ourselves I wonder)

Artemis

↪Gregory

I don't really understand the questions. If you see fire, water, or an oar, haven't you already used a physical sense to capture empirical information?

In that case really the question becomes: can reason work as well as it might based on the limited empirical information from a limited number of senses?

It's not really an interesting question then, I think. The answer would be: probably, but it would take a lot longer and be less efficient than just touching the darn oar.

Bartricks

↪Gregory

I too am a bit confused by the question. For the question is about what reason is, but what you've talked about is the penetrative power of our faculty of reason.

How much our faculty of reason alone can tell us about the nature of the world we live in is an interesting question, but it is not the question of what reason itself is.

As to that question - the question of what reason itself is - the answer, I think, is that reason is a person. For reason prescribes and values and only a person can do those kinds of thing.

Serving Zion

↪Gregory

If you are trying to understand the word itself, think about justification. People have all sorts of different ideas, but they aren't all reasonable. Some people just can't be reasoned with - they are incapable of giving or receiving reasons for the ideas in discussion.

Reason requires a love of the truth, because reasoning is the justifying of ideas as truth by way of demonstrating their accuracy and reliability (to quell doubts), and invariably the truth demands that unreasonable ideas be abandoned.

Therefore, somebody who is prejudiced is incapable of reason - their idea is so precious, the truth forces them to use deceit to create a fallacious reality that conforms to their ideology.

Mww

Reason: the name given to the highest faculty of a human subject, to which all others are subordinated.

One is ill-advised to use Descartes or Hume to characterize reason, except to view an initial, hence necessarily incomplete, understanding of it. Even so, all understandings of reason in and of itself, is entirely speculative.

Terrapin Station

When they are introduced a large body of water, could they use their reasoning skills alone to know that they couldn't breath underneath it, or would they have to test this hypothesis out first? Likewise, would they know upon seeing fire that it's hotter the closer you get to it, or would they have to find this out empirically? — Gregory

I don't see how those notions could possibly be derived from reason alone. You'd need empirical info.

All you need to think about to realize this is that phenomena could appear to be just like water and fire (perhaps as some sort of orchestrated illusion) while having completely different properties.

Wayfarer

When they are introduced a large body of water, could they use their reasoning skills alone to know that they couldn't breath underneath it, or would they have to test this hypothesis out first? Likewise, would they know upon seeing fire that it's hotter the closer you get to it, or would they have to find this out empirically? — Gregory

I think they're both poor examples of the faculty of reason. They’re both examples of interpreting sensory experience - seeing some phenomenon that you had not previously encountered. and then reasoning about it. And because of that, they're not a particularly good answer to the question posed by the title, 'what is reason'?

DingoJones

↪Gregory

For your fire and water example, it would depend on what other knowledge the person can draw upon to inform their reason. It doesnt have to be empirical evidence about water or fire in order for someone to use reason to figure out what the water or fire is.

Mww

↪Wayfarer

Odd, isn’t it? How inherently circular, that reason gives us the means to talk about itself.

Wayfarer

↪Mww

And nearly always taken for granted. People nowadays feel that reason is explained by science, yet without reason there could be no science.

Mww

.......reason is explained by science, — Wayfarer

Yeah, but it isn’t. Mental machinations resulting in observable conditions, sure. Tickle this part of the brain, my toes wiggle. Measure 16 phosphorus ions cross the gap in sector 3 of the occipital lobe, see a particular,repeatable pattern on the ‘scope with respect to my appreciation of a nice French burgundy. B.F.D.

How a person arrives at personal understanding of his own experience a posteriori, or why a particular moral predicate is favored over another.....never gonna happen.

Hopefully.

What is reason?

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