Can reason defend itself?: Philosophy Forums

Philosophy Forums » Philosophy of Science » Science » Can reason defend itself? » Can reason defend itself?

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Can reason defend itself?

Bambi
Student

Usergroup: Members
Joined: May 17, 2005

Total Topics: 3
Total Posts: 95

1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 07/26/07 - 02:02 PM:	#11
Faith is belief without sufficient reason. We have a sufficient reason to refute skeptical doubt in everyday experience, we just don't have an infallible reason. It is the demand for the infallible reason that gets us into trouble, and that demand comes from the core of rationality, the desire to figure things out. So what we really have is rationality questioning itself. In other words, the question "is rationality valid, true, defensible, ect?" is not a demand for something beyond rationality that gives it it's validity, for the question cannot even be formed outside of rationality. So in my mind the proper answer to "can reason defend itself?" is: of course, any attack on reason requires reason.

Nonblack Raven
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Sponsors
Joined: Jun 19, 2004

Total Topics: 47
Total Posts: 1240

Posted 07/26/07 - 05:47 PM:	#12
jwdink wrote: Can reason defend itself? I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out the proper way to phrase or elaborate on the question. Essentially, can reason/logic defend itself as more "true"? Or, at the most basic and axiomatic points of knowledge, does faith have to step in: either you trust that reason is valid and is optimal for discovering reality, or you trust something else as the most basic founding knowledge. If the answer is yes, it can defend itself, I'd be curious to know how. If the answer is no, then is faith in logic no more correct than faith in something else (God, etc.)? I'm drawn to this question because I think of people who have successfully rejected religion, such as this guy: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jsku/memoir2.html I've noticed it often comes down to the fact that they have faith in reason above all things, even a deity. They try to believe this deity is a rational concept, but if they are convinced otherwise, then, as this guy did, they must rethink their beliefs. It raises the question, for me, however, as to what would happen if someone just decided to put faith in God above faith in reason? So that even if God is an irrational concept, they don't have to care, because they believe in him prior to reason. I've articulated this question quite poorly, but hopefully I can be more clear based on responses to this topic. One of the most dangerous of all skeptical ruses is the argument that one cannot justify something called into question by using the thing called into question. The skeptic then suggests that we justify reason or logic without resorting to reason or logic. This is of course impossible, since the very definition of reason or logic is what we use to justify our arguments. Does this mean that reason or logic are a matter of faith and assumption? No, because we can test specific rules of reason or logic against the remaining rules--we can do such thing as determine whether a given logic or set of rules are consistent, lead to obviously true conclusion, usually yield correct conclusions etc. Neverthless, we cannot test reason or logic in toto because there is nothing we could possibly test them with if we abandon reason and logic. As Neurath famously said: " No tabula rasa exists. We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials." Added on edit: To continue the metaphor, we cannot know that our current version of reason or logic is perfect or complete or whether there are alternative reasons or logics better than ours--there may be better planks than ours--but we can notice that the ship hasn't sunk yet and the replacement of planks hasn't sunk our ship. Now skepticism can usefully remind us that a different set of planks might have kept the ship afloat as well or better, but it cannot offer us the possibility, which it so often pretends to do, that ripping up all the planks, or any possible set of planks, would be just as good at keeping the ship afloat. Edited by Nonblack Raven on 07/26/07 - 06:38 PM
NBR

jwdink
Johnnie

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Jul 20, 2007
Location: Maryland

Total Topics: 10
Total Posts: 428

Posted 07/26/07 - 07:30 PM:	#13
Hmmm, nonblack raven, I just don't know. Is it a matter of an inability to examine and rebuild it all at once, like your ship metaphor, or is it a matter of circularity? To test rules against other rules for consistency seems to assume that these other rules are true, not to mention to assume consistency is a valid concept. And what is this "lead to an obviously true conclusion" stuff? Is "obviously true" really a matter of reason, or faith? Now I agree that for practical human purposes, we must assume reason or logic is valid, but this just seems like an admission of faith. Even by defining it as "that which we use to back up our beliefs" we seem to professing faith by defining it as such. Does this makes sense? I'm having an unusually difficult time articulating my argument.

Nonblack Raven
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Sponsors
Joined: Jun 19, 2004

Total Topics: 47
Total Posts: 1240

Posted 07/28/07 - 09:55 AM:	#14
jwdink wrote: Hmmm, nonblack raven, I just don't know. Is it a matter of an inability to examine and rebuild it all at once, like your ship metaphor, or is it a matter of circularity? To test rules against other rules for consistency seems to assume that these other rules are true, not to mention to assume consistency is a valid concept. And what is this "lead to an obviously true conclusion" stuff? Is "obviously true" really a matter of reason, or faith? Now I agree that for practical human purposes, we must assume reason or logic is valid, but this just seems like an admission of faith. Even by defining it as "that which we use to back up our beliefs" we seem to professing faith by defining it as such. Does this makes sense? I'm having an unusually difficult time articulating my argument. Let us consider the question of the status of reason. Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that we should ask what are the alternatives to reason and what objectives we should evaluate them against. However, to ask the question in this kind of way implies the use of reason. If I abandon reason, the very question of the validity of reason is unanswerable, and indeed, unaskable. This is my basic point. I am deeply suspicious of questions that cannot be answeredâ€”is this a matter of faith? No, I think it is a matter of defining our questions. So let us continue with the questions: What are the alternatives to reason? What objectives we should evaluate them against? Now one of the interesting features of reason is that it can define its own limits. Let us suppose the alternative to reason is gut feel, and the goal is answering questions correctly. We can examine this question rationally, and may indeed conclude that there are kinds of issues, kinds of circumstances, kinds of persons, and/or combinations of the three in which gut feel beats out rational decision making in terms of success. Now peculiarly, this conclusion is only possible as a result of a rational approach to the problem. If we rely on gut feel, we can never know if gut feel is superior in any respect or not. So is gut feel superior to reason? Only reason can determine an answer to this question that is not assumed from the startâ€”and that is the peculiarity I wished to point out. Reason provides the basis for critique, including the critique of reason. How are we to critique anything, in the sense of providing for more than one answer at the outset of the investigation, without the use of reason? Edited by Nonblack Raven on 07/28/07 - 10:03 AM
NBR

ragus
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Apr 23, 2006

Total Topics: 16
Total Posts: 2187

Posted 07/28/07 - 10:21 AM:	#15
Nonblack Raven wrote So is gut feel superior to reason? Only reason can determine an answer to this question that is not assumed from the startï¿½"and that is the peculiarity I wished to point out. If gut feel gets me what I want then what has reason got do with it other than confirming that I got what I wanted?
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

Nonblack Raven
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Sponsors
Joined: Jun 19, 2004

Total Topics: 47
Total Posts: 1240

Posted 07/28/07 - 10:33 AM:	#16
ragus wrote: Nonblack Raven wrote If gut feel gets me what I want then what has reason got do with it other than confirming that I got what I wanted? It is only by reason that you can judge a thing by setting a goal "gets me what I want", and evaluating the results in terms of getting me what I want. It is only by reason that I can compare various means of reaching a goal. Like many who would reject reason, you have failed to note the scope of reason, and the extent to which you are using it to say anything whatsoever that is intelligible.
NBR

ragus
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Apr 23, 2006

Total Topics: 16
Total Posts: 2187

Posted 07/28/07 - 10:49 AM:	#17
Nonblack Raven wrote Like many who would reject reason You had better shine-up your reasoning skills if you used it to assume this. I'm not rejecting reason. I'm trying to test the strength of the argument that reason trumps gut feeling. If I punched you in the chops because I felt you were dissing me would I be using reason? On the question of scope is this going to be an "at the end of the day we have to use reason" situation?
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

Nonblack Raven
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Sponsors
Joined: Jun 19, 2004

Total Topics: 47
Total Posts: 1240

Posted 07/28/07 - 10:55 AM:	#18
ragus wrote: Nonblack Raven wrote You had better shine-up your reasoning skills if you used it to assume this. I'm not rejecting reason. I'm trying to test the strength of the argument that reason trumps gut feeling. If I punched you in the chops because I felt you were dissing me would I be using reason. On the question of scope is this going to be an "at the end of the day we have to use reason" situation? Sorry, I am missing your point. My points were that reason can define its own limits--including the possibility that gut feel might be superior to reason, and that gut feel had no such capability. "If I punched you in the chops because I felt you were dissing me would I be using reason."--depends on what you thought the point of the punch in the chops was. If you thought it would convince me, then it would be a use of reason. If you have no idea as to whether it would convince me, whether I might kill you if you punched me in the chops etc, I would say you were not using reason in the sense that reason suggests we should consider the alternatives, our goals and the consequences of the alternatives in terms of our goals. If you did the latter, you would be using reason--if not you would be using gut feel, and possibly to disastrous effect. You ask "On the question of scope is this going to be an "at the end of the day we have to use reason" situation?"--not quite-- I instead suggested any argument against reason must use reason--or be unintelligible. this is not quite the same thing as suggesting reason always works, for reasons I have suggested.
NBR

yffer
Professor

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Mar 02, 2003

Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 543

Posted 07/28/07 - 01:52 PM:	#19
Nonblack Raven wrote: One of the most dangerous of all skeptical ruses is the argument that one cannot justify something called into question by using the thing called into question. The skeptic then suggests that we justify reason or logic without resorting to reason or logic. This is of course impossible, since the very definition of reason or logic is what we use to justify our arguments. Does this mean that reason or logic are a matter of faith and assumption? No, because we can test specific rules of reason or logic against the remaining rules--we can do such thing as determine whether a given logic or set of rules are consistent, lead to obviously true conclusion, usually yield correct conclusions etc. Donâ€™t you recognise the infinite regress? Reason cannot defend itself because the defence of reason is reason which also needs defending ad infinitum. You can justify a claim or rule based on other ones but at some point you run out of other ones. It is at that point you are left with an unsubstantiatable claim/rule etc.

Nonblack Raven
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Sponsors
Joined: Jun 19, 2004

Total Topics: 47
Total Posts: 1240

Posted 07/28/07 - 01:59 PM:	#20
yffer wrote: Donâ€™t you recognise the infinite regress? Reason cannot defend itself because the defence of reason is reason which also needs defending ad infinitum. You can justify a claim or rule based on other ones but at some point you run out of other ones. It is at that point you are left with an unsubstantiatable claim/rule etc. Let me ask my obvious question again: What is the alternative to reason? Why exactly do you consider it superior to reason? Answer these and I am interested, but I suspect you cannot--without using reason. Added on edit--if you wish certainty--I agree you cannot get it. But if you wish to live a life and decide what to do--then one needs starting points, as uncertain as they may be. Therefore the problem I stated--what exactly are our alternatives, and how shall we decide between them? Consider this problem rather than the imperfections of reason, and I shall take you seriously. Endlessly insist that reason is not perfect, and I can only say: what do you suggest we use instead and why? Edited by Nonblack Raven on 07/28/07 - 06:31 PM
NBR

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Sorry, you don't have permission to post. Log in, or register if you haven't yet.