by Scott Cherry
Either way we should all have a very high regard for reason. In review, reason undeniably exists and is self-evident. All humans employ and must employ reason—inescapably. This is not only an essential part of what it means to be human, but in light of Isaiah it is also part of what it means to be God’s ‘offspring’ (the word used by the Apostle Paul as recorded in the book of Acts 17:29). The capacity to reason is a necessary attribute of the human mind and it is largely by it that we function in the complex reality we call nature as well as in the world we humans have constructed for ourselves over time. It is also how we self-identify. You’ve probably heard this well-known statement by the French philosopher Rene’ Descartes, “Cogito ergo sum”, if not in Latin then in English—“I think, therefore I am.” I really like it. There’s a kind of simple, intuitive power to it. A good paraphrase would be, “I reason, therefore I am” because reasoning is a kind of thinking.
According to Aristotle all men desire to know. Knowing is also a part of reasoning. What I said about reason is also true of knowing, because all reasoning is dependent on knowing, or at least the belief of knowing things. Thus, knowledge (whatever it is) and reason work together. Reason is needed to make use of already-possessed knowledge—or information and beliefs we utilize as knowledge—to process and apply it. That is how we function as rational beings. Knowledge is fundamentally necessary for human life, and additional knowledge is always sought after. Reason is needed to obtain knowledge such as data, information, comprehension and understanding from the basis of existing knowledge through the use of rational skills that are both inherent and learned, such as sensory perception, observation, recognition, differentiation, classification, inference, implication, induction, deduction, abduction, synthesis, pattern recognition, extrapolation, interpretation, qualification, prediction, projection, theorizing, systematizing, etc.). Knowledge through reason is unalterably necessary to satisfy the uniquely human desires for understanding, meaning, progress, a sense of well-being, and other human yearnings. Without it we would have even more trouble achieving happiness (which is difficult enough as it is).
But just as humans desire to know, we also desire to reason and to be reasonable. All of us desire at least these two things with respect to reason: 1) to believe that life, society and the world around us should be rational, and 2) that they should be rationally comprehensible.
Most people I know, including me, are prone to excuse ourselves for our own faulty reasoning or poor judgment, but we are generally less willing to excuse others for theirs. Why is that? Again, it’s because of points one and two; we strongly want to believe that the world around us should make sense and be reasonable, including other people. Actually, it is an expectation! So when something or someone else behaves in a way that doesn’t make sense to us (whether for sound or unsound reasons), it makes our knowing and understanding of things more difficult, or impossible. And that is so frustrating! It makes us feel downright violated because it infringes not only upon our desire for things to be reasonable, but also upon our expectation that things should be reasonable. Have you ever heard someone exclaim “That doesn’t make sense!” I have, and if you’re like me you’ve been on both ends. Why do we say this and other things expecting them to carry some weight? It’s because reason comes with expectations.
Here’s another one… “Be Reasonable!”
If you are human you have been on both ends of this statement too. Why am I so confident of this? I am because of simple inductive reasoning that we use every day—the extension of a particular truth to the whole category. Using this form of logic I have a very strong presupposition that certain things are common to everybody, i.e. they’re universally true. And this is one of them. If I’m right then I hardly need to point out the obvious: That you are a rational being and so is every other person. Accordingly, everyone you talk to expects you to think and act rationally, or to make sense, all the time. Indeed, you expect it too, of yourself and of every other person. Thus, when someone tells you to be reasonable you won’t object by claiming that you don’t have to be reasonable. That would be ridiculous. Rather, you would defend the rationality of your position because you want it to be reasonable. If another person thinks you are not being sufficiently reasonable then you are not meeting their expectations and he/she is unhappy about that. Clearly they believe you have the capacity to improve the logic of your argument and that you should, otherwise you should abandon it. And I’m certain you do not disagree with that standard.
Again, there are exceptions, of course with respect to the mentally disabled, small children, and the very elderly, etc. In such cases we make allowances and adjustments as necessary. We could call it a ‘standard deviation’ to a standard that is generally fixed and usually fits certain rational criteria.
In her book, Reason’s Neglect: Rationality and Organizing, Barbara Townley explains the indispensable function and expectation of reason in terms of rational accountability within organizations:
It is…the commonplace and intuitive understanding of reason as the ‘furnishing of accounts’. …Reason is a necessary yet neglected element of social organization and coordination. Reason is the foundation of social interaction in that its premise is that social interactions will be reasonable, that is, they will be capable of being understood [i.e. intelligible] at some level. We expect each other to be reasonable in the sense of our interactions being amenable to some form of rational explanation. Without this, there is no way to predict how to act or respond.
Reasons provide the basis, justification, or explanation of a belief or action. ‘To say that someone acts rationally, or that a statement is rational, is to say that the action or statement can be criticized or defended by the person or persons involved, so that they are able to justify or ground them’ (Giddens, 1994:98). To deny giving a reason is to remain unaccountable and tears the social fabric (Scott-Lyman, 1968). …People expect to act rationally in organizations, in the sense that actions have to be intelligible both to the situations in which people find themselves and to others involved. …How we proffer reason is an important dimension of how we relate to each other. To proffer reasons is to acknowledge the status of the other as a subject. …Engaging in reasoned argument, leaving the other to reach their own judgment, is to see ourselves and others as ends, not means.
What we find in Townley’s words is not a philosophy of reason per se, and yet it is rich philosophy. It is her down-to-earth assertion that all organizations are premised on and demand the mutual exercise of reason between people. But this is no less true in a family or even a one-on-one conversation.
I enjoy a good Facebook discussion on various topics, public or private. On one occasion I engaged in a message dialogue with a student named Kevin at the University of Michigan–Dearborn. From previous discussions he was familiar with my views already, and he asked me a fair theological question, which I thought I answered pretty thoroughly by Facebook standards. Whether I was thorough or not in my own opinion was not the issue at the moment. Kevin’s reply was, “Scott, did you even read what you wrote?” What do you think he meant by that? I don’t even have to tell you, do I? No, but I will. Kevin thought my explanation was unsound and unreasonable. He was essentially saying, “Scott, I do not accept your reasoning; it does not meet my expectations; your logic is invalid; be more reasonable!”
In all fairness, he could have been right; maybe I wasn’t being reasonable or logical enough. (Throughout the pages of this book you will decide for yourself if you think I am reasonable and if he could have been right about my reasoning on that occasion.) Or, perhaps Kevin wasn’t being reasonable. After all, it’s not uncommon for someone who’s using faulty reason to accuse the other person of doing so. There is a third possibility that Kevin and I both had flaws (i.e. fallacies) in our attempts to use good reason to understand the other’s position. This is not uncommon. Many personal discussions involve propositions in which both parties are involved in the mutual exercise of re
asoning and argumentation, both to assert true things and to evaluate the other’s reasoning.
A similar thing happened in a conversation with another university student named Walid. This student was a Muslim with whom I’d had discussions before. On this occasion we stood together in the hallway for nearly an hour while we were comparing our beliefs about God and religion. He took exception to some of my truth claims, as I did with his. What our claims were is irrelevant at the moment. The fact that I was laboring to use my very best reasoning skills is also irrelevant. (Sorting and distinguishing between things is an important reasoning skill, such as distinguishing ideas that are relevant from those that are non-relevant). What is relevant here is that at a certain point Walid became dissatisfied with my reasoning and thought it necessary to give me a primer in deductive logic. Never mind that a young man less than half my age was giving me a lecture in good logic. Never mind that I had some philosophy courses under my belt and that I thought my logic was sound.
The important point is that Walid had an expectation of my reasonability and a standard he thought I was failing to meet. In retrospect, he must have decided one of two things was true, or both: 1) that my logic was faulty or insufficient to defend the proposition I had put forth, or 2) that my proposition was simply indefensible. He had the nerve to expect me to use good logic! I say that tongue-in-cheek, of course, because he had every right to expect that of me, as I had the right to expect it of him. In fact, I called him out on some of his logic too, such as a category mistake or two. (When “apples and oranges” are compared unfairly it is called a category mistake.) We implicitly agreed that it’s proper to expect good reasoning of each other, and that we should both think intelligently about things that are intelligible.
Reason implies intelligibility.
Reason implies intelligibility; that reality can be reasonably analyzed with the goal of arriving at truth, i.e. what is true over against what is false, or perhaps less true. I assert that we all intuitively believe this, even if some say they don’t. Again, science is a supreme example of a discipline that is premised on the notion of intelligibility. We all believe that physical reality is studyable and understandable through the tools of reason, which is science. And to a very large degree, it works. We understand vastly more about the world and the cosmos than we would or could have without science and other disciplines. Theoretically, the universe and the world we live in do not have to be this way. But they are.
That is a part of what makes human communication meaningful and productive. If everyone had all the same reasoning skills and applied all the same rules of logic there would be a whole lot more effective communication in the world. But they do not. This is true even when people have access to the same information and the same presuppositions, or starting points. Of course, biases also come into play, as do emotions and many other things that affect good reason and rational communication. By the term “rational” I don’t mean “rationalistic” wherein only a narrow kind of reasoning counts, as in Rationalistic philosophy. I mean communication that is subject to good principles of reason on all sides, not illogical or nonsensical ones.
As I have said, we are wired to expect this, and even to demand it. And we need it! We need it in relationships, in workplaces, and in every level of society. Good reasoning is essential for all of life, for every meaningful conversation, and every intellectual endeavor. Reason works, and we know it does or we would not do it (as if we could avoid it). Due to myriad variables, it often requires great effort, and it does not always work as efficiently as we would like. But what are the alternatives? Some say none, and I generally agree. But I think there is another: divine revelation. Regardless of your belief system I only ask you to consider it with me as a thought experiment.
Chapter 5
Reason, Revelation and Purpose
At this point I want to talk about the prospect of divine revelation in its relationship to reason. Simply put, revelation is the notion that there is, or may be, a kind of knowledge above and beyond our human capacity to obtain by natural means, i.e. from God, the gods, or some other supernatural Source. The prevalent forms of revelation are the so-called sacred texts such as the Bible, the Qur’an, and the Vedas, to name just a few. Another form would be direct communication with God, the gods, angels, dreams and visions. There is also the notion of general revelation which is that knowledge of the metaphysical, divine, or spiritual world which can be perceived in nature. Only those who acknowledge such a world and such a Source accept this kind of knowledge as real. I do. But it is not my goal at this point to argue for this because my focus is on reason, not revelation. I only want to assert that if there is such a thing as divine revelation it does not eliminate the need for reason. Rather, the faculty of reason would still be necessary and operative even in the presence of revelation, to identify, verify and interpret it.
Part of my argument is the plain fact that there are some things that simply cannot be known through reason alone. Some kinds of knowledge are inaccessible by natural means. When it comes to these we have only two choices: 1) Write them off as unknowable, in which case we can decide to assign them to the column marked “irrelevant” and create our own answers and some rational basis for them. Or, 2) we can try harder to discover them by natural/naturalistic means through our human powers of reason, which is valid. But the things I’m referring to are undiscoverable and unknowable by definition, which I will try to reasonably explain. If we want to know these kinds of things, which many of us do, and we are determined to know them in any objective sense, we would have to look to a source of knowledge that is theoretically superior to ours, if one exists—an Ultimate, Transcendent Source of reason, logic, intelligence, and all information.
Sociologically speaking, this is part of the explanation for why religions are universal—they are everywhere—a universal quest for meaning. Now, you may or may not agree with my proposition, but metaphysical belief systems undeniably exist so this has to be on the table. At the very least divine revelation is a theoretical possibility which millions of people espouse. Whether it’s a probability, much less a certainty, is a different question altogether. If you do not agree, of course you have your reasons, whether sound or unsound, and if you do you also have your reasons. Ironically, both sides must consider this possibility using reason, for there is no other way for us to consider it. In other words, as adults we believe what we believe for particular reasons, and by using reason to some extent. One’s reasoning may be sophisticated or simplistic, valid or invalid, but it is not totally absent even when considering the possibility of divine revelation. Such a consideration still requires reason.
My basic observation here is that collective humanity desires to know things, and everything that is knowable. This is the driving force behind the insatiable quest of science and other disciplines. Some believe this is a plausible quest, which I think is laudable and very telling about the nature of humanity. It is especially true in the scientistic West. The pervasive belief that humanity can and will eventually know everything speaks volumes about our collective psyche and our belief in the intelligibility of Reality. As I see it, this is a kind of compound faith. It is at once faith in humanity, faith in the powers of reason, faith in science, and faith in the order of intelligibility—that all knowledge is accessible to us. I think this is extraordinary, and certainly zealous if not overzealous. But without this faith and the drive it produces we would certainly not know all that we do about the world we live in.
According to the late American philosopher Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), this is one of the unique qualities of humans and is part of what makes us so “wonderful” and “noble” in stark contrast to our horrific cruelty to each other:
The dilemma of man is what I call the nobility of man. We might not like this term because of its romantic ties to the past, but still there is the wonder of man; but contrasted with this is his cruelty. So man stands with all his wonder and nobility, and yet also with
his horrible cruelty that runs throughout the warp and woof of man’s history.
Nevertheless, there are certain barriers that we keep hitting in the acquisition of knowledge, especially regarding the origin of life and of everything else. Why? Surely many things are yet to be discovered and learned. But again, there are kinds of knowledge that, by definition, the sciences can never obtain no matter how successful they are, chiefly because they’re not equipped to discover them. The tools are simply not at their disposal. Even if science could discover the origin of life, for example, which has been fantastically evasive, it could never tell us the purpose of life, if indeed there is one (which I believe there is). This is the “Why are we here?” and “What is the meaning of life?” question. The reason science cannot answer it, ever, is simply that it is a non-scientific question. It is also non-mathematical. But it is a philosophical question, one that the most brilliant philosophers have been wrestling with for ages.
For the naturalist/materialist philosophers especially, there seems to be an impenetrable barrier to the acquisition of knowledge in this respect. Even theistic philosophers, if they were to reject revelation, would run into this barrier (but then in what sense would they be theistic?). Our very best reasoning can lead us right up to the edge, but without the prospect of revelation to provide information that is otherwise unattainable it can bring us no farther. We simply could not know it. (Of course, this would assume that a deity existed who provided no revelation; if there were no such deity at all there simply could be no revelation, no answers to those kinds of questions for which many people yearn.) Should that surprise us? Is it unreasonable that there be such a barrier? I think not.