The average quality score at our professional custom essay writing service is out of The high satisfaction rate is set by our Quality Control Department, which checks all papers before submission. The final check includes: Compliance with initial order details. Plagiarism. Proper referencing Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans Cheap essay writing sercice. If you need professional help with completing any kind of homework, Solution Essays is the right place to get it. Whether you are looking for essay, coursework, research, or term paper help, or with any other assignments, it is no problem for us
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Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing informationwith the aim of seeking the truth. Reasoning is associated with the acts of thinking and cognitionand involves using one's intellect.
The 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay of logic studies the ways in which humans can use formal reasoning to produce logically valid arguments. Aristotle drew a distinction between logical discursive reasoning reason properand intuitive reasoning[6] in which the reasoning process through intuition—however valid—may tend toward the personal and the subjectively opaque. In some social and political settings logical and intuitive modes of reasoning may clash, while in other contexts intuition and formal 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay are seen as complementary rather than adversarial.
For example, in mathematicsintuition is often necessary for the creative processes involved with arriving at a formal proofarguably the most difficult of formal reasoning tasks. Reasoning, like habit or intuitionis one of the ways by which thinking moves from one idea to a related idea.
For example, january 16, reasoning is the means by which rational individuals understand sensory information from their environments, or conceptualize abstract dichotomies such as cause and effecttruth and falsehoodor ideas regarding notions of good or evil. Reasoning, as a part of executive decision makingis also closely identified with the ability to self-consciously change, in terms of goalsbeliefsattitudestraditionsand institutionsand therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination.
In contrast to the use of "reason" as an abstract nouna reason is a consideration given which either explains or justifies events, phenomena, or behavior. Using reason, or reasoning, can also be described more plainly as providing good, or the best, reasons.
For example, when evaluating a moral decision, "morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one's conduct by reason —that is, doing what there are the best reasons for doing—while giving equal [and impartial] weight to the interests of all those affected by what one does.
Psychologists and cognitive scientists have attempted to study and explain how people reasone. 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 the English language and other modern European languages"reason", january 16, and related words, represent words which have always been used to translate Latin and classical Greek terms in the sense of their philosophical usage.
The earliest major philosophers to publish in English, such as Francis BaconJanuary 16 Hobbesand 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". The proposal that reason gives humanity a special position in nature has been argued to be a defining characteristic of western philosophy and later western modern sciencestarting with classical Greece.
Philosophy can be described as a way of life based upon reason, and in the other direction, reason has been one of the major subjects of philosophical discussion since ancient times. Reason is often said to be reflexiveor "self-correcting", and the critique of reason has been a persistent theme in philosophy. For many classical philosophersnature was understood teleologicallymeaning that every type of thing had a definitive purpose that fit within a natural order that was itself understood to have aims.
Perhaps starting with Pythagoras or Heraclitusthe cosmos is even said to have reason. Reason was considered of higher stature than other characteristics of human nature, such as sociability, because it is something humans share with nature itself, linking an apparently immortal part of the 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay mind with the divine order of the cosmos itself.
Within the human mind or soul psychereason was described by Plato as being the natural monarch which should rule over the other parts, such as spiritedness thumos and the passions. AristotlePlato's student, defined human beings as rational animalsemphasizing reason as a characteristic of human nature. He defined the highest human happiness or well being eudaimonia as a life which is lived consistently, excellently, and completely in accordance with reason.
The conclusions to be drawn from the discussions of Aristotle and Plato on this matter are amongst the most debated in the history of philosophy. For example, in the neoplatonist account of Plotinusthe cosmos has one soul, 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay, which is the seat of all reason, and the souls of all individual humans are part of this soul.
Reason is for Plotinus both the provider of form to material things, and the light which brings individuals souls back into line with their source. The classical view of reason, like many important Neoplatonic and Stoic ideas, was readily adopted by the early Church [18] as the Church Fathers saw Greek Philosophy as an indispensable instrument given to mankind so that we may understand revelation, 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay.
Such Neoplatonist accounts of the rational part of the human soul were also standard amongst medieval Islamic philosophers and remain important in Iranian philosophy. In this doctrine, january 16, Thomas concludes that because humans have reason and because reason is a spark of the divine, every single human life is invaluable, all humans are equal and every human is born with an intrinsic and permanent set of basic rights. Other Scholastics, such as Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnusfollowing the example of Islamic scholars such as Alhazenemphasised reason an intrinsic human ability to decode the created order and the structures that underlie our experienced physical reality.
This interpretation of reason was instrumental to the development of the scientific method in the early Universities of the high middle ages. The early modern era was marked by a number of significant changes in the understanding of reason, starting in Europe. 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. This new understanding eventually displaced the previous world view that derived from a spiritual understanding of the universe. Accordingly, in the 17th century, René Descartes explicitly rejected the traditional notion of humans as "rational animals", january 16, suggesting instead that they are nothing more than "thinking things" along the lines of other "things" in 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay. Any grounds of knowledge outside january 16 understanding was, therefore, subject to doubt.
In his search for a foundation of all possible knowledge, Descartes deliberately decided to throw into doubt all knowledge — except that of the mind itself in 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay process of thinking:.
At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is a mind, or intellect, or understanding, january 16 reason — words of whose meanings I was previously ignorant.
This eventually became known as epistemological or "subject-centred" reason, because it is based on the knowing subjectwho 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 many thinkers after him, Descartes explicitly did not divide the incorporeal soul into parts, such as reason and intellect, describing them as one indivisible incorporeal entity.
A contemporary of Descartes, Thomas Hobbes described reason as a broader version of "addition and subtraction" which is not limited to numbers. Similar to Descartes, Hobbes asserted that "No discourse whatsoever, can end in absolute knowledge of fact, 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay, past, or to come" but that "sense and memory" is absolute knowledge. In the late 17th century, through the 18th century, John Locke and David Hume developed Descartes' line of thought still further.
Hume took it in an especially skeptical direction, proposing that there could be no possibility of deducing relationships of cause and effect, and therefore no knowledge is based on reasoning alone, even if it seems otherwise. Hume famously remarked that, "We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant attempted to show that Hume was wrong by demonstrating that a " transcendental " self, or "I", was a necessary condition of all experience.
Therefore, suggested Kant, on the basis of such a self, it is in fact possible to reason both about the conditions and limits of human knowledge. And so long as these limits are respected, reason can be the vehicle of morality, justice, aesthetics, theories of knowledge epistemologyand understanding. In the formulation of Kant, who wrote some of the most influential modern treatises on the subject, the great achievement of reason German : Vernunft is that it is able to exercise a kind of universal law-making.
Kant was able therefore to reformulate the basis of moral-practical, theoretical and aesthetic reasoning, on "universal" laws. Here practical reasoning is the self-legislating or self-governing formulation of universal normsand theoretical reasoning the way humans posit universal laws of nature. Under practical reason, 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay, the moral autonomy or freedom of human beings depends on their ability to behave according to laws that are given to them by the proper exercise of that reason.
This contrasted with earlier forms of morality, which depended on religious understanding and interpretation, or nature for their substance. According to Kant, in a free society each individual must be able to pursue their goals however they see fit, so long as their actions conform to principles given by reason. He 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay such a principle, january 16, called the " categorical imperative ", which would justify an action only if it could be universalized:.
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. In contrast to Hume then, Kant insists that reason 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay German Vernunft has natural ends itself, the solution to the metaphysical problems, especially the discovery of the foundations of morality.
Kant claimed that this problem could be solved with his " transcendental logic " which unlike normal logic is not just an instrument, which can be used indifferently, as it was for Aristotle, but a theoretical science in its own right and the basis of all the others. According to Jürgen Habermasthe "substantive unity" of reason has dissolved in modern times, such that it can no longer answer the question "How should I live?
He thus described reason as a group of three autonomous spheres on the model of Kant's three critiques :. For Habermas, these three spheres are the domain of experts, and therefore need to be mediated with the " lifeworld " by philosophers. In drawing such a picture of reason, Habermas hoped to demonstrate that the substantive unity of reason, which in pre-modern societies had been able to answer questions about the good life, could be made up for by the unity of reason's formalizable procedures.
HamannHerderjanuary 16, KantHegelKierkegaardNietzscheHeideggerFoucaultRortyand 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, january 16, universal, or instrumental reason, and even skeptical toward reason as a whole.
Others, including Hegel, believe that it has obscured the importance of intersubjectivityor "spirit" in human life, and attempt to reconstruct a model of what reason should be. Some thinkers, e. Foucault, believe there are other forms of reason, neglected but essential to modern life, and to our understanding of what it means to live a life according to reason.
In the last several decades, a number of 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay have been made to 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay this critique of reason, or to recognize the "other voices" or "new departments" of reason:. For example, in opposition to subject-centred reason, Habermas has proposed a model of communicative reason that sees it as an essentially cooperative activity, based on the fact of linguistic intersubjectivity.
Nikolas Kompridis has proposed a widely encompassing view of reason as "that ensemble of practices that contributes to the opening and preserving of openness" in human affairs, and a focus on reason's possibilities for social change. The philosopher Charles Taylorinfluenced by the 20th century German philosopher Martin Heideggerhas proposed that reason ought to include the faculty of disclosurewhich is tied to the way we make sense of things in everyday life, as a new "department" of reason.
In the essay "What is Enlightenment? This distinction, as suggested, has two dimensions:. The terms logic or logical are sometimes used as if they were identical with the term reason or with the concept of being rationalor sometimes logic is seen as the most pure or the defining form of reason: "Logic is about reasoning—about going from premises to a conclusion.
When you do logic, you try to clarify reasoning and separate good from bad reasoning. Reason and logic can however be thought of as distinct, although logic is one important aspect of reason. Author Douglas Hofstadterin Gödel, Escher, Bachcharacterizes the distinction in this way: Logic is done inside a system while reason is done outside the system by such methods as skipping steps, working backward, drawing diagrams, looking at examples, or seeing what happens if you change the rules of the system.
Bickard and Robert L. Campbell argued that "rationality cannot be simply assimilated to logicality"; they noted that "human knowledge of logic and logical systems has developed" over time through reasoning, and logical systems "can't construct new logical systems more powerful than themselves", january 16 reasoning and rationality must involve more than a system of logic. Reason is a type of thoughtand logic involves the attempt to describe a system of formal rules or norms of appropriate reasoning.
As pointed out by philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Hume, january 16, some animals are also clearly capable of a type of " associative thinking ", even to the extent of associating causes and effects.
A dog once kicked, can learn how to recognize the warning signs and avoid being kicked in the future, but this does not mean the dog has reason in any strict sense of the word. It also does not mean that humans acting on the basis of experience or 2009 the objectivity and rationality of morality essay are using their reason. Human reason requires more than being able to associate two ideas, even if those two ideas might be described by a reasoning human as a cause and an effect, perceptions of smoke, for example, and memories of fire.
For reason to be involved, the association of smoke and the fire would have to be thought through in a way which can be explained, for example as cause and effect. In the explanation of Lockefor example, reason requires the mental use of a third idea in order to make this comparison by use of syllogism. More generally, reason in the strict sense requires the ability to create and manipulate a system of symbolsas well as indices and iconsaccording to Charles Sanders Peircethe symbols having only a nominal, though habitual, connection to either smoke or fire.
The connection of reason to symbolic thinking has been expressed in different ways by philosophers.
Thomas Hobbes described the creation of "Markes, or Notes of remembrance" Leviathan Ch. He used the word speech as an English version of the Greek word logos so that speech did not need to be communicated. Going further back, although Aristotle is a source of the idea that only humans have reason logoshe does mention that animals with imagination, for whom sense perceptions can persist, come closest to having something like reasoning and nousand even uses the word "logos" in one place to describe the distinctions which animals can perceive in such cases.
Moral Foundations Theory #2
, time: 6:52Pragmatism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Aug 16, · Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that – very broadly – understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it. This general idea has attracted a remarkably rich and at times contrary range of interpretations, including: that all philosophical concepts should be tested via scientific experimentation, that a claim is true if and only if it is useful (relatedly: if a Dear Twitpic Community - thank you for all the wonderful photos you have taken over the years. We have now placed Twitpic in an archived state The average quality score at our professional custom essay writing service is out of The high satisfaction rate is set by our Quality Control Department, which checks all papers before submission. The final check includes: Compliance with initial order details. Plagiarism. Proper referencing
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