Limitations of Reason

Metaphysics & Epistemology
41

Interesting. I don’t quite understand the distinction. In my understanding, experience refers to perception, how things appear to us, and the way we encounter and interpret the world. When I use the term “experience”, I’m referring to how things seem from our perspective and what we directly experience. Whther thsi says anything abotu a potential reality beyond us (noumena?) does this matter? I’m not a good Kantian, so I may well be missing a nuance.

I like this.

I’m not sure I fully get this can you rephrase it?

If I were to ask for a simple paragraph, in ordinary language, about the use of reason, what would you say? I suppose my actual question is, does reason deliver certainty and when it doesn’t why doesn’t it?

42

What fault are you referring to? Also, when I say reason, I include the foundations of reason.

Did you mean to use the word perceive here?

But I am unclear how what you say addresses the quesion about whether reason has potential limitations.

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Experience refers to perception only insofar as perception is the necessary occasion by which experience becomes possible.

Technically, experience refers to the termination of that systemic process, which determines how things appearing to the senses are to be understood…….

…….sorta just like that.

Only insofar as there could never be a reality beyond us, given, first, the kind of intelligence we possess, and second, that intelligence functions in accordance with the speculative metaphysics which prescribes it, all under tacit control of Mother Nature, who will surely bitchslap those speculations that forsake Her laws.
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There is no simple paragraph, that doesn’t ask more than it answers. That being said, and granting that all human thought is purely logical, we begin by thinking, oh I know what that is, full stop, done deal, or if not, then we say, I would understand what that is if (____), in which is thought those conceptions which fill out the first, these being inferences toward a judgement.

Reason, then, is that which says the inferences are valid or not, which affirms or denies a judgement, concluding with I do or I do not understand (whatever the object of my thinking was), ending in an experience which includes knowledge of the thing sensed, or an experience of a mere undeterminable something which doesn’t.

It is here that the claim reason has no function in experience receives its support, insofar as reason has for its object the understanding alone, to which, as a faculty itself, experience does not belong.
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The text spends 250-odd pages describing how this works, which boils down to, understanding does its job according to rules, reason supplies the principles which give the rules their authority.

Does it really work that way? Probably not, with respect to brains, but it was never supposed to be a proof concerning brains in the first place, proof being the negation of which is impossible. It is a speculative theory, constructed so as not to contradict Nature but still based on terms not found therein.
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Oh absolutely. With the glaring caveat that the certainty delivered is determined by the conditions under which it operates, so for these conditions this is certain, for those conditions that is certain, which is fine because that’s exactly how pure syllogistic logic works.

And as far as we’re concerned, it’s exactly how we learn things we didn’t know, or come to know the same things differently. All of which is just to say how we make mistakes in our judgements.

Anyway, thanks for asking, even if the answer isn’t that satisfying.

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44

We agreed that instrumental reason was fairly straightforward. Once you have a goal you can use logic facts and experience to plan and execute a solution that allows you to progress towards your goal.

But is reason a good guide to choosing between the different directions that your life form can take?

Its not so clear because that is tied up with motivation, emotion and probabilty.

Philosophers have often understood this and have talked about moderation and the golden mean but while that is helpful it still doesnt explain how best to choose the reasons that put you pn a course to happiness.

We can say that our goal should be flourishing. That may point to our overall goal but it just gives a name to a set of goals that remain resistant to classification and measurement.

David Hume said “reason is the slave of the passions” and sometimes ( not always) that is true.

45

This is my type of thread!

WHAT is man/woman/consciousness, and HOW do you know it/this?

Reason, I submit, is merely following non-contradictory premises to their logical and non-contradictory conclusions.

Man/Woman/Consciousness IS, because they are ABLE to IS.

An IS IS ABLE to exist.

An IS-NOT IS-NOT ABLE to anything.

ABILITY is the metaphysical primary, with REASON (non-contradiction) by extension being the epistemological primary (your epistemology is ALWAYS informed by your root metaphysic, whether you’re consciously choosing this or not, that’s why this shit is SO tough to language!).

Your ability to reason is confirmed by your ability to confirm you exist, and we can get into how you know that’s not an illusion in another thread (illusions can’t be metaphysical primaries).

The issue here with Kant, Nietzsche, etc. is they argue against metaphysics, without ever stating what they hold in place of it as their own metaphysic, of which they absolutely do harbor, whether consciously or unconsciously.

They have root assumptions and presumptions about the nature of reality, but still approach it through a shoe-horned reductionist, determinist lens which not only betrays reason, is also more or less a form of intellectual larceny lmao.

Have any of these famous voices EVER stated or answered the question “What IS man/woman/consciousness?” in a manner that isn’t mired in materialist-determinist presuppositions or straight up mysticism BS, and thus have absolutely nothing to say about metaphysics and by extension any of that, since that’s what informs said?

In regards to actual metaphysics, nothing these people said is reasonable, let alone rationally consistent enough to yield any Truth with a capital T regarding the fundamental nature of consciousness.

46

Off topic

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What is your idea of the foundations of reason?

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Thank you, that does clarify things. Appreciated.

49

I sense you’re asking this so that, when I offer them, you can say, “That’s not the foundation of reason.”

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50

Give it a go, lets discuss.

51

To me it’s an important Rorty-ish “vector” that we humans drop the sense of some gulf between us and other animals.

One monkey shows other monkeys a new way to access termites as a food source. A human invents a new dance — or a new way to “be” in general. A new social “pose” is invented.

Criticisms of representationalism sound like performative contradictions to representationalist ears, because such ears have been trained to respond to chains of signs as attempts to “map” an “objective reality.” Critics “sound” like bringers of the truth about truth. They are understood to claim that “representationalism is false,” etc.

It’s more like a pointing to the “abyss” that we’ve been managing to navigate all along. To put it playfully, “no one cares about philosophy.” Or only a tiny self-important minority of humans has ever been “infected” by the “Euclidean directive.”

Seconded. I found a few different collections of essays that I found highly readable, probably more enjoyable than his “big” work(s). My “cynical” comments above were sincere enough, but I still enjoy philosophers who try to “build a dam.”

I’m tempted to say that our “problem” is political. And maybe “high theory” doesn’t have much to offer the “trenches.” But I enjoy high theory anyway.

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52

Any chain of reasons is limited, i.e., it comes to an end and the premises must be known by some other meansor, viz., linguistic training, testimony, or sensory experience.

Another limitation is person-relative, i.e., what you can prove to a person depends on what they already know. For e.g., the person must be able to follow the moves in an argument and whether it’s inductive or deductive.

Also, and this is often overlooked, the psychology of a person plays a large part in what a person can accept.

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53

Nice one, Sam. Yes, I think these point to some useful qualifiers and your first point could be expanded upon.

Yes, psychology and education. Hard to accept a sound premise you aren’t equiped to understand. My take is that reasoning is often built upon our affective responses to things, rather than serving primarily as a route to “truth”. I wonder how often it’s a post hoc justification for how we already feel about something?

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One’s psychology toward a belief, person, or even a thing is a real influence. For e.g., if you dislike someone you’ll have a tendency to believe the worst about that person, even if shown counter-evidence.

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There’s some truth to this, in the sense that any human response to anything requires what you call training. Yes, we learn to recognize valid and invalid arguments; probably we couldn’t do this if someone didn’t help us, “train” us, though I daresay some brilliant children might manage it alone.

But you’re pointing to something further. You’re saying, I believe, that part of the “training” involves inculcating an estimation of the value or purpose of argumentation. Not only do we learn to tell a valid argument from an invalid one, but we also learn (on this view) why valid arguments are more valuable than invalid ones, which as you say, is often tied to a representationalist view of how logic and argument map onto the world we encounter. It’s also tied to a praxis, and here I think the case for training is very strong: We learn how we’re meant to respond to argument, what we’re supposed to do when we encounter one.

This supports the Rortyan view that, therefore, we have some choices when offered an argument. One of those choices is to use the language of argumentation to respond, “showing” that the argument is either wrong or makes unwarranted assumptions about objectivity and representationalism. But this showing can be offered in two ways: It can present itself as another step in a dialectic. Or it can make the post-modernist move and present itself ironically.

The latter move is important but often misunderstood and dismissed by its critics. I think it goes something like this: “OK, my interlocutor, you are offering a pro-rationalist argument, and I’m not pro-rationalism. But if I accept the rationalist praxis and respond by giving my reasons (!) why not, I have performatively contradicted myself. But that’s not what I’m going to do. I will offer – perhaps word for word – the same response I would give if I accepted the terms of rationalism, but I am not trying to convince you that I am right. Rather, I’m trying to persuade you to agree with me, and I’m using (ironically, perhaps cynically) a tool that I know really works with you – a rational rebuttal.”

I’m not in favor of this as a philosophical praxis, but I think it’s perfectly consistent – no performative contradiction involved.

Yes, one has to adopt something like that attitude in order to reject the training that teaches us how to care about philosophy. But we would also have to replace it with something else – that is, if one intends to be in conversation with philosophers.

For sure. His extended works are about as much fun as reading Kant or Hegel – but worth the effort. Anyone new to Habermas should start with a volume like Habermas and Modernity, which also includes interpretive essays.

Speaking as a US citizen in 2026 . . . I’ll be in the trenches from now till the November election, and keeping my high theory to myself! (Except on TPF.)

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56

Any system of belief built on good reasons or good evidence is almost by definition philosophical content. Philosophy can’t be escaped. Any system of belief, even one that seems to land outside philosophy, uses philosophical ideas. Logic, linguistic analysis, and epistemology are things all of us rely on, and when we rely on them in a substantial way, we’re doing philosophy, period. None of this is optional. Draw a conclusion and you’ve used logic. Mean something by your words, or accuse someone of equivocating, and you’re doing linguistic analysis. Make a claim to know, or dispute someone’s evidence as weak, and you’re doing epistemology. Nobody gets exempted.

People only differ in whether they’ve looked at the tools they’re using. That’s why the attempted escapes fall apart. Say metaphysics is nonsense and you’ve made a claim about what exists, which is metaphysics. Say reason is only rhetoric and you’ve given me an argument about reason you’d like me to accept using reasons. Say philosophers chase pseudo-problems (which is true sometimes) and you now owe me a test for telling a real problem from a pseudo one, and working out that test is doing philosophy. Even the demand for evidence is a philosophical position, not a neutral place to stand outside philosophy. One needs an account of what makes evidence count as evidence, and that account doesn’t come from the evidence. So the question isn’t whether we’re doing philosophy. It’s whether we’re doing it well. Doing it badly means running on assumptions you’ve never examined, using conclusions whose premises you couldn’t state, and calling it common sense. Doing philosophy well means knowing your assumptions, what it costs you, and what would change your mind.

I write this because people often come into a philosophy forum, and seemingly want to take a position which they believe is outside the philosophical domain. However, they don’t seem to understand that their discourse is philosophical.

I think much of the blame lands on academia. Many academics don’t explain philosophy as the domain of all of us, i.e., that we’re all philosophers to one degree or another.

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I’m running out of PC time for today. My partner deserves my attention too. :wink: So this will be a very brief response to an interesting topic. I’m sure I shall have more to say, as conversations develop.

Oo, fun! I assume we can, er, assume that “reason” incorporates “logic” too, and we don’t have to type “reason and logic” every time? Convenience for lazy typists like me. :flushed_face:

58

Great exposition of this idea. Given that you posted this right after my attempt to explicate the Rortyan “escape from argument,” I’m wondering if you also believe that argument or rationality can’t be escaped, or at least not by substituting rhetoric for dialectic, as Rorty and others suggest we should.

My own answer would be that the Rortyan move legitimately undercuts rational argument, but is still just more philosophy, and for a purpose I deplore. Philosophy is a very big tent.

59

The only way to escape philosophy, especially if you’re defending a point of view, is to babble.

60

That sounds about right to me. Rorty, of course, would say that he is not defending a point of view, he’s using the traditional language of viewpoint-defense to get people to agree with him. That isn’t babbling – it’s a very sophisticated rhetorical move – so yes, it’s philosophy, just as Sophism was, I suppose.