Why Use Reason?

The purpose of this discussion is to address the question of what we mean, in a practical sense, when we advocate the use of reason, and to provide a basis for our assertions that reason is "our most accurate method of understanding reality and our most consistent method of accomplishing goals" and that it is "our ultimate arbiter of what is true and false." For a rather more abstract and theoretical discussion of the nature of reason, our basis for accepting it as a valid intellectual process, and Beingism's take on certain philosophical conundrums concerning its validity, see [the as-yet-unwritten] "What Is Reason?" [link here].

What Does It Mean to "Use Reason"?

In loosely-defined, "common-sense" terms, reasoning is attempting to think in a manner that is free of contradictions and fallacies and that reliably leads to accurate conclusions (and thus to courses of action that help one to accomplish goals). Continuing with this "common-sense" approach to defining reason, we might say that to the degree that an idea or belief is consistent with reality, it is rational, and to the extent that a course of action is likely to accomplish its intended goal, it is a rational one. In the simplest possible terms, then, reason boils down to "sound thinking" or (as applied to discerning the truth) "what works."

This "common-sense" notion of what it means to "use reason" (or "be rational") raises a couple of important questions, however. On one hand, processes other than what we normally think of as "rational thought"--such as wild guessing, accepting whatever we are told, or trusting our "gut feelings"--do sometimes lead to accurate conclusions. Sometimes we guess correctly by chance, are told the truth, or have sound intuition or instincts. In these situations, can we say that we are "being rational" merely because the ideas that we end up with happen to be true? And on the other hand, sometimes even when we put our best and most sincere effort into reasoning something out, we still come to incorrect conclusions. When this happens, are we "being rational" or not? What are the implications of this issue for the usefulness of reason?

Alternatives to Reason

Intuition, guessing, and accepting what we are told by others, among various other possibilities, are all options that might be considered as alternatives to reason as a method of processing information and reaching conclusions. In addition, many of these methods are often highly useful; Beingists do not by any means hold that formal, conscious, and rigorous rational thought processes are the only ones that are ever useful or valid. What, then, is the status of these "other ways of knowing," and why does Beingism seem to prioritize reason above them?

In a nutshell, the answer is that methods of discerning truth besides reason are effective only in contexts when, and to the extent that, they are in some way unconsciously or indirectly rational. If very little or nothing is known about a subject on which a decision must nevertheless be made immediately, for example, it is perfectly rational to simply guess at what course of action is the best one. If past experience has shown you that a particular person tends to be both knowledgeable and trustworthy in regard to a particular subject, it is not necessarily irrational to trust that person's judement or expertise and therefore accept what he or she tells you as (at least probably) true. Since "intuition" is itself a complicated process (as well as a rather vague term), its validity and usefulness is rather more difficult to succinctly assess. The various mental processes that we label "intuition" probably include such phenomena as genetically "preprogrammed" instincts, inclinations to believe things that are appealing to us, and the unconscious application of common misconceptions and/or logical fallacies that we would reject if we were to consider them on a concscious level, as well as the operation of unconscious pattern-recogniton, extrapolation, and connection-forming faculties that some might define as forms of (unconscious) reasoning. Obviously, some of these processes are less valid than others as ways of determining what is true--but just as obviously, some of them (those that constitute a kind of unconscious reason) have great potential for helping us to arrive at accurate and useful ideas.

Of course, to the extent that various "alternatives" to reason are actually in some way based upon or compatible with it, they aren't really "alternatives" to it in any meaningful sense. That said, however, both Beingists and others generally do mean something distinctly different from guessing or relying on intuition (no matter how good our guesses or our intuition might be) when we talk about "using reason." In part, the seeming paradox is merely semantic: while we might call an idea or a course of action "rational" as long as it is consistent with reality and/or our goals (regardless of how we arrived at it), we generally don't talk about the process by which we come up with our ideas as one of "using reason" unless we consciously reasoned those ideas out. What is not merely semantic, though, is the question of the relative usefulness of conscious reasoning versus intuition, guessing, or various other "alternative" tools for processing information and ideas.

Beingism's stand on this question is that while some other processes--notably intuition--are often highly useful, reason is the "ultimate arbiter" of what is true and what is false. Our guesses may well prove correct, and intuition is both invaluable for generating ideas and possibilities and also can often serve as a "shortcut" to arriving at conclusions that may well be accurate. Until our guesses and intuitions have been subjected to conscious, rational analysis, however, we have no basis for concluding that they are accurate. A guess, after all--if it really is a blind guess--is [almost always] at least as likely to be wrong as right, and intuition, because it is unconscious, is a slippery thing; without examining it carefully, we don't know whether we have unconsciously recognized valid patterns and connections, overgeneralized from principles that apply in some situations but not in this one, or worse, merely leapt to the most appealing conclusion that presented itself. This is not to deny that intuition, in its turn, can be more useful than conscious reasoning for some purposes, as implied above. When it comes to the specific task of deciding what is and what is not true, however, Beingists acknowledge reason as the only reliable tool that we have--hence its role as the "ultimate arbiter."

Limitations of Reason

Having called reason the "ultimate arbiter" and "only reliable tool" for the task of distinguishing between what is true and what is false, however, we must also acknoweldge that reason, too, has limitations. Some things that might be defined as "limitations of reason" are not particularly important in the present context--for example, the fact that, like anything else, reason is (obviously) only useful for what it's useful for, and not for other things. In particular, it is often important to recognize that reason is only a tool, and that in itself it does not supply goals. Additionally, reason is probably not the best tool for such purposes as generating imaginative ideas and new possibilities. This "limitation" of reason is analogous to the "limitation" that makes a screwdriver, for example, not the best tool for pounding in a nail. More important to the present discussion, however, is the fact that even as a tool for discerning the truth, reason is by no means perfect. Two limitations at which this essay has already hinted arise from the fact that reasoning something out can sometimes be time-consuming (hence the potential value of intuitive leaps as "shortcuts") and the fact that reasoning requires the possession of adequate information upon which to reason. If you have no information that is relevant to a particular subject, you will not be able to reason meaningfully about it; if you have only a small amount of information, reason may help you to narrow down the possibilities, but it will lead you to conclusions that are tentative at best. In other words, reason is not an all-powerful method for figuring out any given thing, and if it weren't for the availability of other tools (including that of guessing), we might sometimes find ourselves paralyzed when faced with the need to make decisions without having enough information available to determine the most rational choice.

Various other limitations of reason--or at least, of a given being's ability to reason--present a rather more serious challenge to the Beingist view of it as our most reliable tool for understanding the world. After all, as pointed out earlier, it is possible--even common--for a being to attempt to reason something out, but still come to an incorrect conclusion. The major factors that interfere with our ability to reason soundly will be discussed shortly; for now, the important question is this: Is unsound reason--or what we might call "failed reason"--"reason"? After all, it is relatively easy to justify the assertion that sound reason is the most reliable means of arriving at the truth--but how do we know when our own reasoning is sound and when it isn't? And since our reason can be flawed, is it really true, in a practical sense, that reason is more reliable as a means of arriving at the truth than (for example) intuition?

Ultimately, it must be acknowledged that there are probably instances in which individuals come to accurate conclusions, or decide on courses of action that prove useful, via intuition or some other "non-rational" process, but wouldn't have come to the same conclusions or made the same decisions had they relied on reason instead. No being is capable of "perfect" rationality at all times. If, by chance, one believes that a particular conclusion or course of action is rational when, in fact, it is not (that is, one has reasoned poorly)--and if, moreover, one's intuition or "gut instinct" happens to incline him or her toward a conclusion that is accurate--then one will, in fact, be better served by trusting the intuition than by going with the apparently "rational" choice. Of course, there's no way to know when you're in such a situation and when you aren't, so by itself this point doesn't help us to determine whether to trust our reason or our intuition in situations when they do not coincide. Indeed, there is no way to know "for sure" in any such situation whether your reason or your intuition will best serve you.

Advantages of Reason

Beingism, however, maintains that overall, carefully and rationally thinking things through will probably lead you to the truth and reveal your best course of action more reliably and more often than the surrendering of control over what you believe and how you act to the whims of unconscious processes. Some, indeed, might argue that this position merely represents common sense. Still, others might disagree, so since invoking "common sense" hardly constitutes an argument, let's examine this question from a couple of angles. For starters, consider that among the various mental processes that underlie our "intuitive leaps," the "unconsciously rational" ones are surely the soundest; that is to say, a conclusion that we reach because we recognize--immediately and on a subconscious level--patterns or connections that we have not yet consciously identified or thought through, is surely more reliable than one that we reach, for example, merely because--again on an unconscious level--we want to believe it. But when we experience an "intuitive leap," we don't know which of these things we have done--and of course, even if we have done the former, we also don't know whether or not our "unconscious reasoning" is sound. We can, of course, attempt to introspect about our conclusion and the perceptions that may have led to it, but as soon as we do so, we leave the realm of intuition and begin consciously employing reason. Unexamined, our intuition--which we may not have reached by anything even resembling reason, let alone actually sound reason--is surely less reliable than a consciously reasoned conclusion, because even if our conscious reasoning is unsound, at least we can know that we have engaged in it. Of course, as will be discussed shortly, wanting to believe a particular thing can and often does interfere even with conscious reasoning--but if we are reasoning consciously, we are at least more likely to determine that our thinking is being affected by our preferences and emotions than we would be were we not thinking things through consciously. Moreover, reason doesn't depend upon "getting it right the first time"; we can examine and re-examine our thought processes, approach a question from a variety of angles, and keep challenging ourselves to consider just how rational we are really being. Perhaps even more important, we can present our conclusions--and the logic behind them--to other people, who can evaluate our reasoning independently and help us to see any aspects of it that might not be sound. We can, in fact, do these things regardless of whether we initially reasoned our way to our conclusion or got there via intuition; the point is that doing them will greatly improve our chances of actually reaching the truth. This, then, is what Beingists mean when we call reason the "ultimate arbiter"--that the more rigorously, thoroughly, and honestly we subject our views to rational examination, analyis, and criticism, the more likely they are--assuming that they stand up to these examinations--to be accurate.

Factors that Interfere with Our Ability to Reason Soundly

As discussed in previous sections, when we attempt to reason our way to the truth, we do not by any means always succeed in reasoning soundly. Thus, both in the interest of presenting an honest and realistic view of the reliability of reason in practice and of identifying the pitfalls to which we all would do well to remain alert as we approach the task of understanding the world, let us briefly consider some of the major factors that sometimes prevent us from reasoning soundly.

The Finitude of Consciousness

The simplest and perhaps the most obvious reason why our reason is sometimes unsound is that no one's ability to store, retrieve, or process information is infinite. Put simply, we make mistakes: we miscalculate, forget to take this or that factor into account, misread or incorrectly copy data, misinterpret sensory information, etc. Most of us know, for example, how to add, and yet we all make math errors from time to time when attempting to perform addition. This doesn't mean that mathematics is unreliable--it merely means that we are fallible. In the same way, when we make mistakes in our reasoning, it doesn't call into question the usefulness of reason as a tool--it just means that we weren't sufficiently rigorous or thorough. Sometimes, we just mess up.

Limits of Organizing Structures

All thinking beings have intellectual "organizing structures" or "paradigms" that they use to make sense of reality. These are formed over a being's life from a combination of genetic predispositions and learned experiences, which are constantly interacting and combining with new experiences as they happen to produce an ever-evolving sense of reality. We are highly influenced by the circumstances of our existence and the organizing principles we've developed to guide us in making decisions about our lives. We can think of a paradigm as a huge, three-dimensional, partially-completed puzzle. New ideas are like puzzle pieces; more complex ones have less regular surfaces, which makes it harder to find places in our paradigm to which we can attach them. Moreover, ideas of a particular type tend to have similar shapes, and ideas that are very different tend not to fit together with them as easily. In other words, the less easily a particular idea fits into your paradigm, the more difficult you will probably find it to reason soundly about that idea. As a result, we sometimes hastily reject ideas that we can't readily fit into our paradigms rather than struggling to come to grips with said ideas and, should they prove valid, adapting our paradigms to accomodate them. Relatedly, because we tend to become accustomed to thinking of the world in whatever way we think of it, we often become emotionally invested in continuing to think of it in that way. This tendency relates closely to the third and final factor that needs to be considered.

Bias

The fact is that some beliefs, ideas, and worldviews are more appealing to us than others. This may be because the beliefs in question are intellectually satisfying, because they are optimistic, because they provide certainty or a sense of purpose, because they are flattering to us, because they serve our interests in some way, or merely--as noted above--because they are familiar. Moreover, societal and interpersonal pressures often make life more difficult for us if we believe certain things than if we believe other things, and many of us are especially motivated to agree on matters of importance with those to whom we are the closest. These emotional influences, along with the cognitive limitations imposed by our organizing principles (as discussed above), often affect our thinking at a subconscious level, even when we are trying to reason consciously. It therefore behooves us to strive to be as consciously aware as we can of the limiting effects of our own paradigms, as well as of the biases that result from our emotional attachments and vested interests.

Conclusion: Should We Always Be Rational?

Does Beingism urge that we "use reason" at all times? It depends on how one understands the question. For one thing, while Beingism does maintain that thinking about things rationally will generally increase your likelihood of understanding them--and that choosing your actions rationally will help you to accomplish your goals--Beingism does not presume to "tell you" to be rational. Reason it what it is--and given what it is, you would probably be well-advised to employ it often. Beingism does not, however, maintain that you necessarily "should" do any given thing. Secondly, while reason will generally help you to make sound decisions, we are not suggesting (for example) that you withhold judgement on what to have for breakfast each morning until you have worked out a formal syllogism demonstrating which of the available options is the "most rational." Remember that on a day-to-day level, rationality is about sound thinking and "what works"; it is not rational to spend excessive amounts of time trying to prove definitively that your every action is irreproachably rational. On the other hand, though, there will probably be occasions when (to continue with the breakfast example) you will benefit from devoting some thought at the start of your day to questions like how long it will be before you will have another chance to eat, and how filling a breakfast you should therefore consume before starting the day. If you simply follow your impulse and scarf down a doughnut or two because this is quicker and tastier than the more filling (and nutritious) options, you may regret it in a few hours! The point, again, is that reason is about what works, and that it is a tool to use as needed. Certainly it will generally not serve you well to be deliberately irrational--but rationality does not consist of constantly stressing over your every choice or action for fear that you might have overlooked a more rational alternative, either. To be rational is to be flexible, to take reality as it comes and for what it is, and to recognize that there isn't necessarily always one single "most rational" choice in any given situation. It is also rational to recognize and avail oneself of the benefits of intuition, imagination, and emotionality. In short, rationality is not some kind of straightjacket whose purpose is to limit your options, constrain your imagination, or crush your spirit; rather, it's a highly useful intellectual tool that can be empowering, enlightening, and even liberating.