In contrast to the use of “reason” as an abstract noun, a reason is a consideration that either explains or justifies events, phenomena, or behavior.10 Reasons justify decisions, reasons support explanations of natural phenomena, and reasons can be given to explain the actions (conduct) of individuals. An informal fallacy is an error in reasoning that occurs due to a problem with the content, rather than the form or structure, of the argument. In Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio presents the “Somatic Marker Hypothesis” which states that emotions guide behavior and decision-making. Damasio argues that these somatic markers (known collectively as “gut feelings”) are “intuitive signals” that direct our decision making processes in a certain way that cannot be solved with rationality alone. Damasio further argues that rationality requires emotional input in order to function.
The traditional main division made in philosophy is between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Formal logic has been described as the science of deduction.64 The study of inductive reasoning is generally carried out within the field known as informal logic or critical thinking. The earliest major philosophers to publish in English, such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke also routinely wrote in Latin and French, and compared their terms to Greek, treating the words “logos”, “ratio”, “raison” and “reason” as interchangeable. The meaning of the word “reason” in senses such as “human reason” also overlaps to a large extent with “rationality” and the adjective of “reason” in philosophical contexts is normally “rational”, rather than “reasoned” or “reasonable”.11 Some philosophers, Hobbes for example, also used the word ratiocination as a synonym for “reasoning”.
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Rousseau’s theory, that human nature is malleable rather than fixed, is often taken to imply (for example by Karl Marx) a wider range of possible ways of living together than traditionally known. This eventually became known as epistemological or “subject-centred” reason, because it is based on the knowing subject, who perceives the rest of the world and itself as a set of objects to be studied, and successfully mastered, by applying the knowledge accumulated through such study. Breaking with tradition and with many thinkers after him, Descartes explicitly did not divide the incorporeal soul into parts, such as reason and intellect, describing them instead as one indivisible incorporeal entity. Accordingly, in the 17th century, René Descartes explicitly rejected the traditional notion of humans as “rational animals”, suggesting instead that they are nothing more than “thinking things” along the lines of other “things” in nature. Any grounds of knowledge outside that understanding was, therefore, subject to doubt. Among the Scholastics who relied on the classical concept of reason for the development of their doctrines, none were more influential than Saint Thomas Aquinas, who put this concept at the heart of his Natural Law.
Christian and Islamic philosophy
- The early modern era was marked by a number of significant changes in the understanding of reason, starting in Europe.
- This new understanding eventually displaced the previous world view that derived from a spiritual understanding of the universe.
- Think, cogitate, reflect, reason, speculate, deliberate mean to use one’s powers of conception, judgment, or inference.
- For example, when a patient displays certain symptoms, there might be various possible causes, but one of these is preferred above others as being more probable.
Psychologists and cognitive scientists have attempted to study and explain how people reason, e.g. which cognitive and neural processes are engaged, and how cultural factors affect the inferences that people draw. The field of automated reasoning studies how reasoning may or may not be modeled computationally. Animal psychology considers the question of whether animals other than humans can reason. In artificial intelligence and computer science, scientists study and use automated reasoning for diverse applications including automated theorem proving the formal semantics of programming languages, and formal specification in software engineering. Hamann, Herder, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Rorty, and many other philosophers have contributed to a debate about what reason means, or ought to mean. Some, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Rorty, are skeptical about subject-centred, universal, or instrumental reason, and even skeptical toward reason as a whole.
- Among the Scholastics who relied on the classical concept of reason for the development of their doctrines, none were more influential than Saint Thomas Aquinas, who put this concept at the heart of his Natural Law.
- Philosophy is often characterized as a pursuit of rational understanding, entailing a more rigorous and dedicated application of human reasoning than commonly employed.
- They often begin with subordinating conjunctions such as because, since, or as.
- Abductive reasoning, or argument to the best explanation, is a form of reasoning that does not fit in either the deductive or inductive categories, since it starts with incomplete set of observations and proceeds with likely possible explanations.
Others, including Hegel, believe that it has obscured the importance of intersubjectivity, or “spirit” in human life, and they attempt to reconstruct a model of what reason should be. In computer science, a system performs meta-reasoning when reasoning about its operation.99 This requires a programming language capable of reflection, the ability to observe and modify its own structure and behaviour. Assessing how well someone engages in reasoning is the project of determining the extent to which the person is rational or acts rationally.
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Reasoning involves using more-or-less rational processes of thinking and cognition to extrapolate from one’s existing knowledge to generate new knowledge, and involves the use of one’s intellect. The field of logic studies the ways in which humans can use formal reasoning to produce logically valid arguments and true conclusions.5 Reasoning may be subdivided into forms of logical reasoning, such as deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning. In other words, according to Rousseau, reason, language, and rational community did not arise because of any conscious decision or plan by humans or gods, nor because of any pre-existing human nature. As a result, he claimed, living together in rationally organized communities like modern humans is a development with many negative aspects compared to the original state of man as an ape. If anything is specifically human in this theory, it is the flexibility and adaptability of humans. This view of the animal origins of distinctive human characteristics later received support from Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Think, cogitate, reflect, reason, speculate, deliberate mean to use one’s powers of conception, judgment, or inference.
Philosophy is often characterized as a pursuit of rational understanding, entailing a more rigorous and dedicated application of human reasoning than commonly employed. Philosophers have long debated two fundamental questions regarding reason, essentially examining reasoning itself as a human endeavor, or philosophizing about philosophizing. The first question delves into whether we can place our trust in reason’s ability to attain knowledge and truth more effectively than alternative methods. The second question explores whether a life guided by reason, a life that aims to be guided by reason, can be expected to lead to greater happiness compared to other approaches to life.
One of the most important of these changes involved a change in the metaphysical understanding of human beings. Scientists and philosophers began to question the teleological understanding of the world.21 Nature was no longer assumed to be human-like, with its own aims or reason, and human nature was no longer assumed to work according to anything other than the same “laws of nature” which affect inanimate things. This new understanding eventually displaced the previous world view that derived from a spiritual understanding of the universe. Abductive reasoning, or argument to the best explanation, is a form of reasoning that does not fit in either the deductive or inductive categories, since it starts with incomplete set of observations and proceeds with likely possible explanations.
The conclusion in an abductive argument does not follow with certainty from its premises and concerns something unobserved. What distinguishes abduction from the other forms of reasoning is an attempt to favour one conclusion above others, by subjective judgement or by attempting to falsify alternative explanations or by demonstrating the likelihood of the favoured conclusion, given a set of more or less disputable assumptions. For example, when a patient displays certain symptoms, there might be various possible causes, but one of these is preferred above others as being more probable. The two competing theories concerning the origins of reason are relevant to political and ethical thought because, according to the Aristotelian theory, a best way of living together exists independently of historical circumstances. According to Rousseau, we should even doubt that reason, language, and politics are a good thing, as opposed to being simply the best option given the particular course of events that led to today.
It is a key research question in the psychology of reasoning and cognitive science of reasoning. Rationality is often divided into its respective theoretical and practical counterparts. In the English language and other modern European languages, “reason”, and related words, represent words which have always been used to translate Latin and classical Greek terms reasons to call out of work in their philosophical sense.