Metaphysics of Reason/Logic
Obviously if we are doing philosophy, we try to use reason/rationality to make an argument and avoid contradictions. However is reason simply, as the postmodernists would argue, just another normative way of looking at the world that creates a power structure?
Note that I’m using reason as defined as:
Or does it correspond to reality because our observed physical reality seems to follow some level of consistency as well? In order to use logic to understand our world, we in some way have to assume our world is logically intelligible and predictable.
In other words, what our our reasons for trusting reason/logic?
Note that I’m using reason as defined as:
the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic
Or does it correspond to reality because our observed physical reality seems to follow some level of consistency as well? In order to use logic to understand our world, we in some way have to assume our world is logically intelligible and predictable.
In other words, what our our reasons for trusting reason/logic?
Comments (89)
:scream: :grimace:
That's why instead of logos, I advocate xin!
Good luck!
Quoting Agent Smith
:up:
:up: The heart of reason or reason of the heart.
It's just a thought!
From the heart, I hope.
I hope too.
It is important to note that it is reason that defeats itself. Realizing that reason is a circular process, as you have shown, is an entirely rational process: you don’t need any element external to reason to show that reason is fundamentally unreliable, self-contradictory.
This means that the statement “everything is relative” is not an external idea introduced by relativists. It is reason itself that says that reason is invalid. As a consequence, once reason has concluded that reason is invalid, you cannot apply the criterion to the sentence itself, to say that, as a consequence, the statement is wrong. This is the mistake made by those who apply the statement “everything is relative” to itself, to conclude that the statement itself is relative and, as a consequence, something must be non-relative. This is a mistake, because, once reason has said that reason is invalid, you cannot apply the conclusion to the statement itself, because, applying the conclusion to itself would mean ignoring what it has said: once reason has said that reason is invalid, the consequence is that we must stop reasoning, which means we cannot carry on by applying the conclusion to itself. After reason has said that itself is invalid, applying this to itself again is an invalid action. Applying the conclusion to itself would mean treating reason as something that is still valid, still working.
As a consequence of all of this, such concepts like “foundation”, “fundamental”, need to be abandoned. We need to resign ourselves to give up the comfort and reassurance given by the idea of foundation. There are no hard props to rely on, everything is like liquid.
It is important to note that “liquid”, “relative”, does not mean “nothing”. Liquids have a certain degree of consistency. We just need to calibrate our actions to that degree of consistency. You cannot stand on water, but you can swim and a ship is able to travel on it; water is even able to make holes on rocks and metals, if sprayed with enough pressure.
My summation of reason is the following.
1. Concluding and acting upon which is logically undeniable. In other words, using deductions where possible.
2. Understanding one's limitations, and the fact that one's deductive construct could be wrong. Thus being open to new information, and acceptance of one's own possible failings.
3. Using cogent inductions where it is impossible to deduce.
I believe reason is a tool to help us understand and be able to handle reality at a more capable level than without reason. Its not that being reasonable will guaranty a successful outcome, its that in general, it will much more than if you are not being reasonable.
Science can't offer a reason for existence. The magical appearance of something out of complete nothing is reason-devoid and as such an irrational explanation.
What's the alternative to doing this for life? Going on intuition and emotion all the time?
That's not going to help you get very far, in fact, it's likely to get oneself killed. The "postmodernists" who argue otherwise are using reason to justify whatever they say, so...
Yes. And there must be a reason for this.
For one, you wouldn't be able to communicate if not for reason. Using language is an endeavor in reason.
Quoting Manuel
The postmodernists are pointing out that Reason is a subset of value , and value is affective. Thus reason is organized and gets its sense on the basis of affective comportment, how the world matters and is relevant to us.
That depends on the question asked. When the great scientists Prof. Dr. Proof is asked what the reason is that there is a material universe he might answer that there is no reason, which is merely an expression of his ignorance, hidden beneath denial. It's a cover-up tactic which is used.
Until it doesn’t. Reason is playing games within a value frame. All the while the frame itself is ever so subtlety being turned topsy turvey. Until lo and behold , one finds oneself in a new value frame , and has to create new games of reason. It’s transformation of value which drives cultural and scientific metamorphosis , and reason is impotent here.
I was going to make a similar comment. People toss the word "reason" around a lot without being very specific about what it means. I don't have any particular problem with your definition, but I note that the vast majority of human cognition is not found within its borders. Reason is just a tool.
I would trust a sound argument or explanation. Not just because it is 'rational.'
Some people trust Reason over Intuition, partly because they want to be as rigorous as possible in their conclusions. When exposed to public scrutiny, their reasons can be expressed in objective terms, while subjective Intuition is difficult to justify, except by empathy : "you feel me?". Pragmatic reasoning is like arithmetic : 1 + 1 = 2, but intuitive insights can be creative : 1 + 1a = 2a. Precise reasoning is necessary for scientific purposes, to cancel-out the fuzzy fringes of intuition. But intuitive inspiration is also necessary to point in the right direction to the unknown destination. :smile:
"I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”
? Albert Einstein
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”- Albert Einstein
“Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can’t do that because it has had so little experience. A grown-up person knows the word because they’ve seen it often before.”? Agatha Christie
Now, one can eliminate the need for a reason, but that's even more irrational than providing a cause.
I think this just highlights what @Philosophim wrote. It's important to define what we mean by "reason." Reason, as it is discussed in the opening post, is a process for finding the truth. A reason, as you are discussing it, is different. It's another word for a cause or purpose. They are completely different things.
But the aim is to find the true reason for existence. Causes give no answer, only a description.
It depends on your frame of reference what reason is used. There is no such thing as pure reason. That's an abstraction applicable for an imaginary world only.
Ok, but you're still talking about "reason" in a different sense than the OP is. Reason, as it is normally used, is not the process of finding the reason for existence.
When we think of reasoning we tend to gravitate toward formal systems like logic or mathematics. What doesn't immediately come to mind is the kind reasoning that psychotherapists see in their clients. To me this is the most important kind of reasoning , because our anxieties, confusions , fears, anger and guilt define the limits of our sense making powers. An emotional
outburst is a kind of reasoning, a coping
stance toward a world which has become difficult to assimilate. By this measure , reason in its broadest sense isn’t a capacity we sometimes use and sometimes
fail to use. Rather, reason is synonymous with sense making , which we are always doing as long as we are alive. Our motivational-affective system is wholly in service of anticipating and assimilating events. The optimally well-adjusted individual doesn’t need to know any formal logic or math. The kind of
reasoning that they employ entails the ability to partially unravel a crumbling scheme of understanding and experiment with and explore incipient new ways
of looking at a situation. As a result of
trial and error, a new workable anticipatory stance emerges, and can then be tightened up using math or logic
But if these are relied upon too heavily, they will hamper the ability to reconstrue when the next crisis of understanding arrives.
I'm just talking about regular old normal, impure reason. The kind you and I are involved in here.
Sounds reasonable. But how can it be used to find out about the reason for existence?
I have answered that question to my own satisfaction, although probably not yours. There is no reason for existence. There is never an answer to the question "Why?" Only "How?"
In the light of gods, reason can be given. Science merely describes creation while informing us about eternal heaven and the eternal life in it.
In this case, the idea of “reason” I had in mind were things like modus ponens, avoiding what are defined as local fallacies, drawing conclusions from new or existing information, etc. But it is a sort of fuzzy concept IMO.
In particular, I would argue that certain logical fallacies are not necessarily self-evident, and we even see some of these being deconstructed under postmodern influence. Things like the genetic fallacy, as hominem, etc are regularly employed in “arguments” nowadays.
This is where it seems like we have to make a circular argument. We say reason is the process of finding truth, because we believe that we can arrive at truth using reason. Now, perhaps reason was developed because it described our conception of reality. However, to claim that we have arrived at truth because we used reason is a metaphysical claim about the world saying that truth follows due to our use of reason (probably pretty justified, it seems to do better than other methods, etc).
Reason is a tricky subject-people hundreds of years ago thought the sun revolved around the earth (makes sense-we seem to be stationary but the sun seems to move). This conclusion would be an application of reason from the premises. But now, we know this is not the case.
Relativity made it possible again to view it both ways. The Earth rotates around the Sun, but the Sun can just as well be seen rotating the Earth (as well as the entire universe when the Earth rotates around itaxis).
I'm not a follower of any religion. I don't see things the way you do. For me, the reason for existence is a human question that only has human answers.
It's not a circular argument at all. Reason is a process for finding the truth. That's a definition. That's what reason is intended for. Now, perhaps it's a bad or ineffective process, but that's another question.
Of course, we can invent a multitude of reasons and purposes for human existence. You can, like Richard Dawkins does, say that the reason of all life is to propagate genes or memes (in the case of people). Which can be turned into the opposite as well. We could say love is the reason, or making art. Doing science, or sport or dance. Etcetera. But these don't offer a reason why existence exists in the first place. No science can't answer that. It's easy to live without such reason and just accept existence as a fact without a reason. That's what you do. But I like to know why the universe is there. And science can't offer a reason. The so-called hard problem of consciousness melts away in the light of gods.
Quoting Hillary
Because it does. That's enough for me. Clearly not for you.
The universe exists because it exists?
Yes. It just does. Again - that's enough for me.
Are you not curious for the why?
Yes, but it can never be definitive, since it always relies on subjective faith. Note, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with having faith, we all do it, just that such beliefs can never be demonstrated to be true in any "objective" sense. In fact, I think there is precious little than can be so demonstrated, and even that is always dependent on context and auxilliary hypotheses or assumptions, which are themselves not demonstrable.
Something which Copernicus et al deduced from the application of reason to the evidence, to overturn the apparently-obvious conclusion that the Earth is stationary at the centre of the Universe.
People have reasons, not the universe.
There you go! All reasons are told in stories. All stories are human. So different stories have different ibjective reasons. Science has physical non-intelligent material causes as reason, religion has intelligent reason for the material basics of the universe. Both are equally true and objective stories. The creation stories of science can be checked but don't provide a reason, theist stories provide a reason, but can be checked more difficultly, if at all.
I mean, why the universe exists?
I don't think any of the stories necessarily are, or can be shown to be, objectively true, if by "objective" is mean 'true regardless of belief or opinion'.
Not necessarily. But we want them to.
Some do. Others, like me, question the very idea that the idea of anything being objectively true in any absolute (context free) sense is even coherent.
Well, an absolute reality has the living being as context, paradoxically as it might sound. My absolute reality of gods is a different one from the atheist scientist. Why should there be one absolute reality? By definition? That's a silly invention made in ancient Greece, on which, sadly enough, modern science is based. I think there can be more objective realities. It depends on who you ask. Many problems arise by claiming that your objective reality should be the same for everyone.
Quoting Hillary
In the sense I mean it, no one can have any absolute (context free) objective reality so the problem doesn't arise.
It's a paradoxical idea. I had a long discussion about this on another philosophy forum. The idea of a unique absolute reality originates in the Greek philosophers. Xenophanes created the idea in the context of the many Greek gods and changed them into one omni super god monster, which became the one and only, unimaginable God. Similar like Plato's mathematical, unknowable ultimate reality, approximately knowable. Both ideas formed the basis of western religion and science. Let the idea gi and we're left with a multitude of absolute realities, if people want them to be.
Quoting Janus
Maybe they can't but they want to have their worldview absolute existence. The particle physicist wants his preons to be true, the theist his gods, the astrologist his system of prediction, or the Aboriginal his dreamtime.
I see the idea of a unique absolute reality as following logically from the idea of an absolute reality. And there can be no real contradictions in reality of any kind. much less in an absolute reality, it seems to me.
Quoting Hillary
I agree that people do imagine the stories they believe to be absolutely true. But they can't all be, so...most of them must be wrong if one of them is right; or else they are all wrong inasmuch as they are imagined to be absolutely true if there is an absolute reality which isn't any of the stories, and even if there isn't then imagining any story to be an absolute reality is wrong in any case.
That's the idea our brains are short-wired with. It's the Greco-Roman idea tought at our schools from young age. Modern thinking is based on that silly idea some cooked up. Why is it so difficult to accept there can be more of them? Because then it isn't one anymore?
I don't think so. The definitions of reason in the google dictionary are
Note that this has nothing to do with truth necessarily. For instance, mathematics is often described as an application of pure reason. But unless you're a mathematical platonist, mathematical truths aren't tied to some ultimate reality.
If we define "truth" as "that in accordance with fact or reality," then we have to make the metaphysical claim that fact and reality an be ascertained with logic and reason in order to expect our application of reason and logic to provide us with truth.
Uggghh and I found the definition of "true" to be "in accordance with fact or reality."
If we take "reality" as "the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them," then science, reason, and mathematics actually don't tell us much about reality at all. They do tell us idealistic, notational ideas of reality, which are incredibly useful and perhaps "good enough" in most cases.
I disagree. Definition 1, as I noted in a previous post, is clearly not the sense of "reason" addressed by the original post, which did not discuss "a reason" or "reasons", but "reason". The OP said:
Quoting Paulm12
This is consistent with your Definition 2. To say this has nothing to do with truth is not correct. We make arguments about the truth of a position. Thinking and understanding are the tools we use to make judgements about truth.
Quoting Paulm12
You're talking about some fancy schmancy subtle, nitpicky version of truth with all sorts of qualifications and conditions. Cartesian truth I guess. I'm talking about regular old everyday truth like who murdered the butler or how the war in Ukraine will affect the price of butter in Peoria.
:fire:
The area of a square is 4 cm[sup]2[/sup]. What is the length of its sides?
[math]x^2 = 4. \therefore x = \pm\sqrt 4 = \pm 2 [/math]
[math]-2[/math] is what we call an extraneous solution. Lengths can't be negative, this "solution" is of no practical significance.
Be practical-minded! Get the hell out of ivory towers!
Maybe our reason is mathematical, or logical by nature, and we just observe what we can, and that's why the particular reality as it appears to us behaves consistently. Thus, the reason is circular in a way that we find what our brain can find, we understand the universe the way our brain work. To me it looks like this tells nothing about the reality outside our subjective understanding.
In the 17th century, we explained the universe as gigantic, mechanistic clockwork, all was backed up with our mathematics and we could verify our theories with measurements. Then we ran into some troubles but fixed that with some more mathematics. Now we can model objects that we cannot see with our ever sophisticated mathematics, and run tests in vast particle accelerator machines, and the universe seems to be happily following along. We just keep on solving anomalies with some more mathematics, and developing more sophisticated models. And all this grows out of basic logic our brain starts to build when we grow up. Me, not-me. Me, mother. One and the Many. What if the reality can be whatever, we just don't know any other way to break it up.
This sounds like Kant, and I'm not very proud of it. I mean it's 2022, I should know better.
True. But science is just one expression of reason. I wrote an explanation about the origin of existence using reason here https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12098/a-first-cause-is-logically-necessary/p1 But to the point of the OP, what do you think reason is, and should we trust it?
Yeah, it can be difficult to define. In your case, I think you're viewing reason as logic. While I think logic is used with reason, it is not necessarily equivalent. I want to say logic is the result of reason, whereas reason is the process by which logic is understood and acquired. One can have reason, but never have learned formal logic. Still, you may want to edit the OP and add in specifically that you mean logic while the topic is still new. Its a good topic!
If I want to know the reason of existence, I wanna know why there is a universe with life in it. A physical mechanism offers no answer to that question. I think I have a reasinable(!) cosmological model, but that still offers no reason. It just can't have come into existence out of the blue. There has to be a reason, an intention, a purpose, to let it appear from nothing. That reason offer gods. And power of creation was used. Took them a while though to invent the basic structure, like it took me 15 years to find the model. So the reason for lifee is not to pass on genes or memes (which is circular and based on the unproven central dogma in molecular biology), to sing, to perform, do science, dance, sport or paint, etc. Science can't explain it. All these activities are disenchanted by science. Gods bring back the wonder.
That's a fair and great point. I first want to say, because it is not said enough on these boards, that is a fine thing to want. It is not stupid or deserves derision that you have a desire for such answers. I might be derailing the thread here, but I find this important.
The conclusion I make is that it did all come out of the blue. That is necessarily came out of the blue. But that's not important here. What's important here is to ask yourself why the circumstances of your existence necessitate how you must exist? Lets say a person is raised in a drug dealing household. Does that necessitate they must become drug dealers? No. What if an evil God created humanity? Must you necessarily be evil if you have a rational mind? No.
The power that you hold may be shaped by the circumstances that caused your existence to be, but they do not necessitate what you do today, or in your future. The power of philosophy and reason is to examine the things we take for granted in a new light, and find freedom in breaking free of unreasonable circumstances or societal pressures. It is not to destroy wonder, it is to restore wonder, curiosity, and an understanding of our freedom.
The purpose you serve today, is to be what you are today. To discover, solve problems, experience joy, sadness, comfort, hardship etc. It is to live. And if you are one of the lucky few who thinks about it, you can work to live how you want to live in the now of today and tomorrow. Find your passions, your drives, and what makes you feel alive and pursue that. Be the person that on their death bed does not look at regret with what they did not do in their short time here on Earth.
And if you don't mind, consider that there are a lot of us also trying to do this. So don't hurt us unnecessarily in your pursuit. Maybe offer a little consideration when we fail or stumble, and some short praise and admiration when we reach it. We will offer it back in kind, and hopefully make the world a better place for us all.
In honesty: :clap:
Great words! Which shows their power!
I agree the reason or purpose for live is life itself, with all ups and downs (I experience both rather extremely, if you know what I mean), and the things you mentioned. And in this light gods disappear into thin air indeed. Still, all the great things in life, like painting, photography, dance, love, physics, etc. get a kind of load then in the sense that science can't explain them.
Thanks for your great comment!
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting 180 Proof
You tell me. What makes something work vs. not work, or more reliable vs less reliable?
It seems to me that the kind of science that offers an alternative to mechanism, panpsychism or animism in explaining the origin and nature of the physical world must spring from a philosophy that does the same. One would not expect to find such a philosophy in Kant or earlier thinkers, but Hegel would appear to have inaugurated a new era with his evolutionary dialectic. Marx’s dialectical materialism, Bergson’s creative evolution, elan vital and lived duration , the phenomenologists’ thing in itself , Heidegger’s Being in the world , Deleuze’s difference and Derrida’s differance all point to creative becoming as the basis of both living and inorganic processes. If one still wants to post gods as the source of this becoming , they would have to be much less interesting and powerful than the sort of gods that the Kantians and pre-kantian philosophers needed in order to explain the difference between the living and the inorganic. The radically relativist philosophers in particular not only remove the gap between life and non-life, they also remove the idea of purpose and reason as anything more than contingent values. This does t leave much for a god to do.
Without it our sentences wouldn't face the tribunal of experience as a corpus but only individually. Reason binds them together.
Quoting Paulm12
Not on any grand scale, no.
Around and around we go.
Quoting Harry Hindu
In saying that something works or is reliable is also saying it is adequate, so what makes something work vs. not work, reliable vs. unreliable or adequate vs. inadequate if it does contains some element of truth vs. false - as in it follows from what is the case vs. what is not the case?
Very good point, I think logic would have been a better way to say it. For instance, I was taking the 2nd definition of reason (not the noun one) that says
I will update.
In order to use logic to understand our world, we in some way have to assume our world is logically intelligible and predictable.
Question: For the principle that “a claim about X cannot both be true and false at the same time and in the same respect” to hold (given that “true” is “conformant to that which is real”), how is it not inevitable that the principle “the reality of X or any of its properties cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect” must also hold?
This on the grandest of scales ... I'll add that the answer should preferably withhold from entering realms of Cartesian Skepticism.
The first principle pertains to what can result from psyches, the second to what is ontic; both, however, being covered by the Aristotelian principle of noncontradiction – which, tmk, is foundational to all consistent logic.
Hence, for one example: if a claim about X can both be true and false at the same time and in the same respect, then the reality of X or any of its properties must be able to both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. Yet this latter state of affairs doesn’t specify the world as we know it day to day.
Quoting Paulm12
Yes. I'm in agreement with this.
Neglected the question of what our reason for trusting reason is, else what our logic for trusting logic is. Yes, reason is rationally baseless - founded on infinite regress, circularity, or ad hoc dictums - and so forth. But I’ll argue that, we are existentially determined to so trust reasoning on grounds that we have no other choice but to so trust. Even if the specific form our reason/logic takes is, for example, that of dialethism, it is yet there. As is also the case with our possible mistrust of reason/logic: we can only accomplish this mistrust via use of some reason/logic which we innately trust.
Basically, to trust logic means to trust that a thing is what it is and is not what it is not. Logic is just an elaboration of the principle of identity or non-contradiction. Whether we understand or perceive the thing correctly is another matter.
Properties and relations are where correspondence gets too grand for me. They are too much like verbs and adjectives to be plausible as contenders for ontological commitment along with X, Y and Z. And they aren't required for asserting truths about X, Y and Z.
:roll: Once more, explicitly, for the slow ones way in the back ...Quoting Janus
:clap: :100: Thanks! (Harry needs this spoon-feeding.)
I kind of want to ask, though a bit off topic: a property of liquid water (not ice or steam) is that it's wet. I can sort of see the argument that wetness is subjectivity dependent, hence mind-dependent, hence not "objective" in the sense of mind-independence. Still, would you be arguing that the wetness of water does not correspond to reality? If so, on the grounds that I've just mentioned? (Probably won't argue with your answer; just curious.)
Not sure that ‘by a process of logic’ is quite correct. Reason and rationality are not identical. Reason is at least capable of acknowledging the limitations of logic, whereas rationality excludes affect, rendering logic ‘absolute’.
We ‘trust’ logic due to affect, or irrational desire for a systematic order and predictability to reality - a fear of uncertainty.