The perfection of reason: is it possible?

[jay gw]

Reason
The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence.
Good judgment; sound sense.
To talk or argue logically and persuasively.

Perfect
Lacking nothing essential to the whole; complete of its nature or kind.
Being without defect or blemish.
Completely suited for a particular purpose or situation.

Happiness is the fulfillment of one's nature. But the highest power that renders us specifically different from brute animals is intelligence, that is, the ability to reason.

And so human perfection will especially consist of the perfection of reason.

As Aristotle writes: "All men by nature desire to know...For it is because of their wonder that men both now begin to philosophize and at first began to philosophize."

The purpose of man's life consists in perfecting this sense of wonder. In other words, man's chief end in life, according to Aristotle, is to contemplate truth, that is, to contemplate the highest things. The activity of contemplation is the highest activity that a human person can engage in.

Aristotle:

...the activity of our intelligence constitutes the complete happiness of man,...So if it is true that intelligence is divine in comparison with man, then a life guided by intelligence is divine in comparison with human life. We must not follow those who advise us to have human thoughts, since we are only men, and mortal thoughts, as mortals should; on the contrary, we should try to become immortal as far as that is possible and do our utmost to live in accordance with what is highest in us.
_______

Is it really possible that a person can "perfect" their reason?

Do all people have innate capacity for reasoning? Does everyone have it to the same degree?

It would imply that there is some absolute standard or perfect model that reason is judged against.

Aristotle and almost all Western philosophy agrees that a standard like that exists. I'm not sure if one standard exists for all people, and for all situations.

If a standard for good reasoning doesn't exist, then why can't anything be believed? I can believe I'm Napolean or Jesus. Or that I can fly.

Good logic follows certain rules, anything that breaks them is not good logic. But logical doesn't mean "true" or objective either.

 

[drkitten]

The highest power that renders us specifically different from brute animals is intelligence, that is, the ability to reason.

This statement was wrong when Aristotle said it. It has not gotten any righter in the intervening thousands of years. The rest of your post is fundamentally based on a falsity, and therefore at best irrelevant and at worst meaningless.

 

[Gestahl]

Is it really possible that a person can "perfect" their reason?

No, not globally. Human constructed ideals are inherently contradictory and unreconcilable in my estimation, and so subjectivity enters in. In certain topics, I would think yes such a thing could be acheived.

Do all people have innate capacity for reasoning? Does everyone have it to the same degree?

I would say all higher mammals and some birds do. How else do you train them? Not everyone has it to the same degree, nor the desire for it.

Aristotle and almost all Western philosophy agrees that a standard like that exists. I'm not sure if one standard exists for all people, and for all situations.

Nope. Several philosophies recognize that absolutes and standards are not universally valid.

If a standard for good reasoning doesn't exist, then why can't anything be believed? I can believe I'm Napolean or Jesus. Or that I can fly.

Good logic follows certain rules, anything that breaks them is not good logic. But logical doesn't mean "true" or objective either. [/b]

I think you are confusing two different scenarios for belief and knowledge:

1) Knowledge and belief about the physical world and it's going's on.

2) Knowledge and belief as to human constructs and symbols that operate on another level than physical reality.

The first is largely consistent and objective (though not always, see relativity and QM).

The second is not.

Logic sets up rules for deductive logic of the if...then variety. Unfortunately, human constructs are inductively created, and are thus very hard, if not impossible, to treat deductively. Some have argued that inductive logic and reasoning isn't even valid.

ETA: Formatting

 

[jay gw]

This statement was wrong when Aristotle said it.

Please inform us as to why Aristotle was wrong.

Knowledge and belief as to human constructs and symbols that operate on another level than physical reality.

What level do they operate on? I agree that knowledge of the physical world aka science is different from knowledge of human constructs.

Since when is human reasoning a construct? I constructed my ability to reason? I don't agree.

Human reasoning has its basis in physics, not symbols. It's only thru symbols that it's expressed and can be criticized.

Logic sets up rules for deductive logic of the if...then variety.

Logic is never inductive? I don't agree.

 

[drkitten]

Please inform us as to why Aristotle was wrong.

Because brute animals have the ability to reason, for one.

Because Aristotle wasn't even consistent about what he claimed was the distinctive mark of humanity; he's also claimed (with much more justification) that laughter is what distinguishes humans from brute animals.

And, finally, because humans aren't particularly rational; witness their performance on the Watson/Johnson-Laird task, or read any of Kahneman's Nobel-prize winning research for further details.

 

[jay gw]

And, finally, because humans aren't particularly rational

The examples you used show that humans make errors in decision making. It doesn't show that they can't perfect their reasoning.

If humans were born with perfect reasoning, Aristotle wouldn't need to say they can perfect it. We can see that human children make mistakes in logic.

The point is.......is it even possible to perfect reasoning?

 

[Batman Jr.]

Happiness is the fulfillment of one's nature. But the highest power that renders us specifically different from brute animals is intelligence, that is, the ability to reason.

It has been a comparatively small group of people throughout history that has been responsible for all of the advancements we've made in the scientific and artistic disciplines. People often wrongly will take the bounties from these great men's/women's labors and attribute them to the human species as a whole. Having greater perspicacity about the world around you will lead you to a seldom entertained but more accurate conclusion: most everyone might as well still be living in the trees.

 

[jay gw]

It has been a comparatively small group of people throughout history that has been responsible for all of the advancements we've made in the scientific and artistic disciplines.

This might be true, but the conditions that exist to do it are made by communities as a whole. Wars have a way of diminishing the level of artistic achievements, and so does poverty.

What you mean is that for the majority of people, perfecting reason is a waste of time. You're either born with it or you're not.

 

[Eleatic Stranger]

Because brute animals have the ability to reason, for one.

Because Aristotle wasn't even consistent about what he claimed was the distinctive mark of humanity; he's also claimed (with much more justification) that laughter is what distinguishes humans from brute animals.

And, finally, because humans aren't particularly rational; witness their performance on the Watson/Johnson-Laird task, or read any of Kahneman's Nobel-prize winning research for further details.

I think you might be oversimplifying Aristotle's position here in favor of an easier reading. He did admit that animals had the ability to reason, in fact, but pointed out that there's a distinctive flavor to the way in which human animals did it (having to do with standards, possibly, though I won't stand by that example very strongly -- a better way of putting it might be to say that we have the ability to take something as a reason for something else (or to take it as a reason qua reason, to get really picky)). Aristotle was a thorough going naturalist, after all, and treated human beings as a type of animal -- a feature that is often obscured by the thousand years of christian metaphysics and interpretations (somewhat - Aquinas seemed fine with this aspect, at any rate).

Also I think the point about human beings not being particularly rational is kind of the point -- we have a certain standard (rationality) with reference to which we can say that such and such is rational and such and such isn't rational. The fact that we can do that is what's interesting -- not that we in fact often fall short of the standard.

(I'm not even sure what use a standard we were all perfectly equipped to meet would serve -- it would seem sort of a useless standard at any rate.)

Is it really possible that a person can "perfect" their reason?

Do all people have innate capacity for reasoning? Does everyone have it to the same degree?

I think the same general point above. It's probably not possible that anyone could perfect their reasoning - because reasoning or rationality works as a standard against which we evaluate things (and that sort of norm generally doesn't work too well if it's generally achievable). Also I would say in answer to the second question (quite in line with Aristotle) that there's no reason to think so and substantial reason to think otherwise -- some people are just less able to reason, just like some people are less able to restrain their immoral desires, for example.

It would imply that there is some absolute standard or perfect model that reason is judged against.

Aristotle and almost all Western philosophy agrees that a standard like that exists. I'm not sure if one standard exists for all people, and for all situations.

If a standard for good reasoning doesn't exist, then why can't anything be believed? I can believe I'm Napolean or Jesus. Or that I can fly.

Good logic follows certain rules, anything that breaks them is not good logic. But logical doesn't mean "true" or objective either.

This part gets more interesting, though - because I have to ask what you might mean by saying that some absolute standard exists. Surely you don't mean that in order for reason to be judged against some standard there has to be some perfectly reasonable person (such that evaluations would go like this: "So and so is pretty reasonable, but he's no George W Bush" (assuming that George W Bush is a perfectly rational person)). That would seem to make nonsense of the idea of it as a standard in the sense that we're looking for, after all.

Another way to look at it might be to simply assume perfect rationality as the logical end point of a range of evaluations (irrational, somewhat rational, more rational, pretty darn rational, etc). This wouldn't require one to assume that the standard existed in a strong sense (or at any rate, no more than one is required to assume that ideal entities exist generally speaking -- some people might still want to claim that). If we think of the standard in this way then it makes perfect sense to claim that the standard exists for all people -- it's just part of the logic (so to speak) of the practices involved, and since those practices are universal among humans (in a certain sense), so is the standard.

If a standard didn't exist in any sense, though, then I'm not even sure your point entirely follows. Surely, right now, it's entirely possible to believe that you're napoleon, right? What you want to say is that it wouldn't be possible to say that you shouldn't believe that you're napoleon. And that comes down to saying something like "if there's no standard for evaluating beliefs then there's no sense in holding beliefs to some standard", which is true, I suppose, but kind of empty given that we do in fact do that precise thing all the time. (And, in fact, our ability to do that is part and parcel of having beliefs at all, I would argue.)

Finally, I'm not entirely sure about the point of the last bit. Logic is part of rationality, but one could be perfectly logical and yet stunningly irrational at the same time (though the same is not true in reverse -- one cannot be illogical yet rational.) This, however, is fairly straightforward, and I'm not sure exactly how it bears on the rest of the things you've argued -- are you saying that there could be different standards of rationality which all hold logical reasoning as part of them yet diverge radically in other ways?

 

[c4ts]

The purpose of man's life consists in perfecting this sense of wonder. In other words, man's chief end in life, according to Aristotle, is to contemplate truth, that is, to contemplate the highest things. The activity of contemplation is the highest activity that a human person can engage in.

Aristotle:

...the activity of our intelligence constitutes the complete happiness of man,...So if it is true that intelligence is divine in comparison with man, then a life guided by intelligence is divine in comparison with human life. We must not follow those who advise us to have human thoughts, since we are only men, and mortal thoughts, as mortals should; on the contrary, we should try to become immortal as far as that is possible and do our utmost to live in accordance with what is highest in us.
_______

Well, if you're talking about the Metaphysics, the Aristotle says the chief goal in life is to find the first and final cause because of our nature to yearn towards knowledge. Contemplation is how we get there, therefore a divine activity. Happiness comes from the fulfillment of that need. So contemplation for the sake of contemplation, as you seem to be talking about, would not be divine, as it offers no insight into causes, and doesn't grant fulfilling knowledge. This whole bit about trying to become immortal has to do with the time it takes to fully pursue these causes. And what is "highest in us," Aristotle says, is virtue. All we need is a virtuous standard to look up to, and we can pursue it. Where does virtue come from? Human beings, to paraphrase Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle here makes no argument for your idea of perfection, which has nothing to do with your idea of absolutes. He makes an if : then statement, a very interesting one, which you don't look into.

So, is intelligence "divine" in comparison to man?

 

[jay gw]

This part gets more interesting, though - because I have to ask what you might mean by saying that some absolute standard exists. Surely you don't mean that in order for reason to be judged against some standard there has to be some perfectly reasonable person

I didn't say absolute standards existed, I said do they?

It couldn't be a person, it would have to be some model - a model that would be based on rules everyone agreed on.

Interesting - from the web's atheist board comes extremely tepid lukewarm responses. I think I know why religious people want rules - because atheists don't have any.

 

[Eleatic Stranger]

I didn't say absolute standards existed, I said do they?

Ok, then the same question still applies: do they exist in what sense?

It couldn't be a person, it would have to be some model - a model that would be based on rules everyone agreed on.

This doesn't quite answer the question, though - what would be a 'model'? Certainly you don't mean a diagram or a written out set of rules, right? And apparently you don't mean some actual 'ideally rational person' either - so what exactly are you asking about?

I think I know why religious people want rules - because atheists don't have any.

This, however, is quite a lot of nonsense.

 

[jay gw]

Ok, then the same question still applies: do they exist in what sense?

Absolute standard (hypothetical) - a standard to judge the correctness of your reasoning. A reference.

Since reasoning is mostly symbolic, it would be have to be a symbolic standard, not a person. It would have to also be independent of anyone, objective and neutral.

The fact that the question can't even be answered without everyone running around confused says that the chances a standard exists or can be made to exist is small to none.

Which is why I said that religion offers something that atheism doesn't - rules. That you personally don't agree the rules are absolute is irrelevent. Religious people don't need you to agree. It's the group holding them that must agree.

Atheists here or anywhere never agree on common sets of standards, because it would approach.....being a religion. And obviously atheists refuse to do that.

 

[drkitten]

Absolute standard (hypothetical) - a standard to judge the correctness of your reasoning. A reference.

Since reasoning is mostly symbolic, it would be have to be a symbolic standard, not a person.

Fundamentally wrong --- one of the primary findings of modern psychology (Wason, Johnson-Laird, Gigerenzer, Kahneman, Tversky, et cetera) is that "reasoning" as done by humans is not symbolic but situational.

However, there's a very good evolutionary explanation for this; human problem solving ability evolved .... (wait for it) to let humans solve problems. So the evolutionary standard by which problem solving ability was measured wasn't symbolic, but a set of probabilistic (and real-life) events. People whose problem-solving abilities let them succeed in "typical" situations prospered, even if their abilities were not rational in the strictly symbolic sense, while people with perfect rational reasoning ability would have been selected against in the typical situation where there was either too little information to make a decision (but where a "correct" WAG would save the day), or where there was too much information (requiring a rational processor to take too much time to evaluate all the information, but again, a correct WAG would save the day).

Part of the trick of human cognition, then, is not only to reach "rational" conclusions when appropriate, but also to reach conclusions that cannot be rationally supported but are nevertheless pro-survival. This may, for example, lead humans to spot patterns where there are none ("pareidolia"), on the evolutionary ground that it's better to see something that isn't there that to miss something important that is. Similarly, it's more necessary to reach conclusions quickly, and in the face of uncertainty (Is that thing chasing me a tiger? I better stop and figure it out....), than to be symbolically accurate.

Basically, you're chasing an inappropriate standard. And your quote from Aristotle : "All men by nature desire to know..." is, again, fundamentally wrong, reflects a complete misunderstanding of human nature, and has not become any less ridiculous in the centuries since he wrote it.

 

[Eleatic Stranger]

Absolute standard (hypothetical) - a standard to judge the correctness of your reasoning. A reference.

Since reasoning is mostly symbolic, it would be have to be a symbolic standard, not a person. It would have to also be independent of anyone, objective and neutral.

The fact that the question can't even be answered without everyone running around confused says that the chances a standard exists or can be made to exist is small to none.

Which is why I said that religion offers something that atheism doesn't - rules. That you personally don't agree the rules are absolute is irrelevent. Religious people don't need you to agree. It's the group holding them that must agree.

Atheists here or anywhere never agree on common sets of standards, because it would approach.....being a religion. And obviously atheists refuse to do that.

I don't agree with everything new drkitten has posted above, but I'll note that the first thing you've said (reasoning is mostly symbolic) is frankly ridiculous. We don't even need to tell a story about evolution or do psych studies to see that. In my average day - and I don't think I'm particularly out of the ordinary, or if I am it's probably in the opposite direction - the majority of my reasoning is not symbolic in the slightest, it's entirely practical. I figure out what goes where, how to get from x to y, what does what in what way, and so on. And as such it's also firmly situation dependant (in the way pointed out above). Symbolic reasoning, especially purely symbolic reasoning, is generally an exception or a rarity -- it's just more noticeable.

Also not one of the sentences in the first two paragraphs there actually follows from the sentences that precede it, you know. Even if reasoning were mostly symbolic, the standard could still be symbolic reasoning as is done by (insert actual exemplar here). And, even if it was a symbolic standard, there's no reason to think it would have to be independant, objective, and neutral (and good reason to think otherwise -- try to come up with an account of what it is for something to be a reason without automatically taking a certain sort of viewpoint (that of a human animal) and you'll see what I mean).

And the fact that something is hard to answer -- or more to the point, that you're confused about it -- doesn't bear on the chances of that question being answerable, unless you're dealing with a startlingly perverse standard of reasoning.

And finally your last comments about religion are silly. Not all religions have rules that function in that way, not all religious people treat the religious rules in that way, and there's absolutely no reason to infer that atheists don't have ideal standards from the fact that religions tend to deal with them. A common set of standards is a prerequisite for any meaningful encounter between individuals - it is far from being anything like a religion.

 

[jay gw]

one of the primary findings of modern psychology (Wason, Johnson-Laird, Gigerenzer, Kahneman, Tversky, et cetera) is that "reasoning" as done by humans is not symbolic but situational.

You didn't understand what I posted. I didn't say the purpose for thinking is symbolic. I said the MEANS by which someone reasons is symbolic.

How else are you doing it? Listening to the "call of the wild"? People don't use instincts like other animals. Human thinking is done mostly consciously and deliberatively. Other animals do neither, as far as has been discovered about them.

So the standards for perfect reasoning would have to be in symbolic form. The other reason is that there is no way for them NOT to be. If they're communicated, they're usually going to have to be in symbols.

Again, if the understanding of human thinking is confusing all of you, the chances of the perfection of it is, well, extremely remote.

 

[Robin]

This thread has been going 3 days and still no mention of Godel.

Undecidability seems to suggest that reason cannot be perfected, even in a symbolic form. However I can't prove or disprove that.

 

[jay gw]

Godel

here's something I found that applies to this thread

Although this theorem can be stated and proved in a rigorously mathematical way, what it seems to say is that rational thought can never penetrate to the final ultimate truth ... But, paradoxically, to understand Gödel's proof is to find a sort of liberation.

For many logic students, the final breakthrough to full understanding of the Incompleteness Theorem is practically a conversion experience. This is partly a by-product of the potent mystique Gödel's name carries. But, more profoundly, to understand the essentially labyrinthine nature of the castle is, somehow, to be free of it.

___
Ok. What he's saying (I think) is that something like a mathematical system can become so complex that there are certain assertions that can't be proven. He uses an example of a Universal Truth Machine, that knows all things. He's able to make a statement that jinxes and proves it can't know everything for certain.

A standard for reasoning doesn't need to be perfect to be useful. It also doesn't need to be too complex.

But the first thing....for the 3rd time...can anyone say that reasoning can be perfected?

 

[Robin]

But the first thing....for the 3rd time...can anyone say that reasoning can be perfected?

OK, bear in mind your definition:

Perfect
Lacking nothing essential to the whole; complete of its nature or kind.
Being without defect or blemish.
Completely suited for a particular purpose or situation.

And bear in mind that Godel's theorems go to the nature of a system of reasoning then:

There can be a system of reasoning that fits the criteria stated above for perfection and that a person can be taught to apply that system then:

Yes reasoning can be perfected.

 

[drkitten]

You didn't understand what I posted. I didn't say the purpose for thinking is symbolic. I said the MEANS by which someone reasons is symbolic.

Um, NO.

The means by which someone reasons is not symbolic; there are a lot of different aspects going on simultaneously, but probably the single most important aspect is a non-symbolic (or, to use Smolensky's term, "subsymbolic") form of pattern matching. "The current situation is kind of like <this> situation that I remember, and so the appropriate reponse is kind of like <this> response." A person gets "better" at reasoning, by being able to do more and more appropriate pattern recall, which is specifically not the same as more and more accurate.

Basically, you have a completely incorrect, outdated, and unfounded view of how human cognition actually occurs. To be entirely frank, this entire thread consists of one material misstatement after another on your behalf. "Since Hawai'i is the capital cit of Oregon, is it better to take the I-95 south, or I-90 east out of San Francisco to get there?"

For the third time, reason, as you define it, cannot be perfected because your definition of reason hinges on a completely misunderstood and factually incorrect view of how reason actually occurs (and a tacit misunderstanding about the nature of "perfected" as well). I don't care how many times you re-ask the question about the best way to drive from San Francisco to Hawai'i, the answer will remain the same each time.