I’ve written occasionally on the results, sometimes ludicrous and sometimes dangerous, that can follow from the unbridled, ungrounded application of “reason,” so called, to the problems of human life. (See here in particular.) Let me be more pointed.
We’re not quite sure what “reason” is, to begin with. Humans have the capacity for disciplined and systematic thought along certain lines. The Greeks are usually credited with making the most, earliest, of this fact. Mathematics and logic are our inheritance from them, along with some practical applications thereof. Aristotle, of course, gets the credit for instituting the study of formal logic, in part by systematizing kinds of syllogisms and exploring their implications. It is thus that we recognize that
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
is a valid argument, while
All men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is a man.
is not valid, even though the conclusion happens to be true.
As regards the quantifiable, mathematics does wonderfully well. And as regards certain types of well constructed sentences, logic does, too. But understanding the limits implied by “certain types of well constructed sentences” took some time. No one could blame the Greek thinkers and their early successors for their exuberance in the application of their shiny new tool. Over time it began to be said that this “reason” was a gift of the gods, or a spark of the divine within us, or – secularly speaking – a sort of mental Swiss army knife, useful in any situation.
Because we are talking about human beings, it is no surprise that over the centuries many errors of logical deduction have been committed, sometimes because of carelessness, sometimes because premises were ill founded, sometimes because the desired conclusion was in mind from the outset and logic was overcome by the determination to arrive at it.
(A charming example of this last mode of intellection can be found in the article “Government” that James Mill, father of the more famous John Stuart, wrote for an early edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In it he began from first principles and, step by painstaking step, deduced the ideal form of government, which – what were the odds? – turned out to be a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, part elected and part hereditary!)
And sometimes errors have arisen from the fact that not everything in human life is quantifiable or narrowly logical.
By the time of René Descartes, a certain caution might have been expected, but no. Descartes was, among other things, a mathematician, and he persuaded himself that the same kind of axiomatic reasoning that worked in geometry would work in any subject matter. Thus it was that he reasoned himself into an inescapable trap called solipsism (Solipsism is the philosophical idea that "My mind is the only thing that exists". Solipsism (Latin: solus, alone + ipse, self) is an epistemological or metaphysical position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist), whence – having rested for a time on the famous “Cogito ergo sum” thing – he couldn’t reason himself out again without an ad hoc appeal to the existence and good will of a god.
The successes of the scientific method, to say nothing of our everyday experience, ought to have taught us all by now that this faculty called reason only works well when it is fed a carefully prepared diet of quantifiable, verifiable data from the outer world. And even then it is apt to go wrong, so the results we get must always be held lightly, as current best estimates, rather than tightly, as eternal truths. Eternal truths too often begin to look like weapons, and weapons tightly held are too often used.
reposted from: Britannica
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments
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