Reason
REASON
A faculty or power of the mind, whereby it draws just conclusions from the true and clear principles. Many attempts have been made to prove reason inimical to revelation; but nothing can be more evident than that it is of considerable use in knowing, distinguishing, proving, and defending the mysteries of revelation; although it must not be considered as a perfect standard by which all the mysteries of religion must be measured before they are received by faith. “In things, ” says Dr. Watts, “which are plainly and expressly asserted in Scripture, and that in a sense which contradicts not other parts of Scripture, or natural light, our reason must submit, and believe the thing, though it cannot find the modus or manner of its being so in the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation, which are above the reach of our reason in this present state. But we cannot, nor must we, be led to take the words of Scripture in such a sense as expressly and evidently contradicts all sense and reason, as transubstantiation: for the two great lights of God, reason and revelation, never contradict each other, though one be superior to the other. “
Therefore reason has a great deal to do in religion, viz. to find out the rule (of faith, ) to compare the parts of this rule with one another, to explain the one by the other, to give the grammatical and logical sense of the expressions, and to exclude self-contradictory interpretations, as well as interpretations contrary to reason. But it is not to set itself up as a judge of those truths expressed therein, which are asserted by a superior and infallible dictator, God himself; but reason requires and commands even the subjection of all its own powers to a truth thus divinely attested; for it is as possible and as proper that God should propose doctrines to our understanding which it cannot comprehend, as duties to our practice which we cannot see the reason of; for he is equally superior to our understanding and will, and he puts the obedience of both to a trial.”
See RELIGION and REVELATION, and books there recommended; also Porteus’s Sermons, ser. 5. vol. 1.; Jenyns’s Internal Evidence, p. 122; Ryland’s Contemplations, vol. 1: p. 83; Theological Miscellany, vol. 2: p. 533; An Essay on the Use and Abuse of Reason in Matters of Religion, by Witsius, and translated by Carter; Dr. Watts’s Strength and Weakness of Human Reason.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
Reason
GENERAL MEANINGS
Both in ordinary life and in philosophical discussions the term reason is of frequent occurrence in different significations.
Etymologically the word comes to us, through the French, from the Latin ratio, which is originally the functional noun of the verb reor, “I think” (i.e. I propose a res to my mind). According to Donaldson, res=h-ra-is, a derivative from hir=cheír (hand); hence res is “that which is handled”, and means an object of thought, in accordance with that practical tendency of the Roman mind which treated all realities as palpable. Ratio, in opposition to res, denotes the mode or act of thinking; by extension it comes to designate on the one hand the faculty of thinking and on the other the formal element of thought, such as plan, account, ground, etc. This wide use of the word reason to denote the cognitive faculty (especially when dealing with intrinsic evidence, as opposed to authority) is still the commonest. The word has been used in this sense in a definition of the Vatican Council (Denzinger, “Enchiridion”, 11th ed., Freiburg, l911, nn. 1785-6); but already in Aristotle we have a clear distinction between intellect (voûs), as the intuitive faculty, and reason (lógos), as the discursive or inferential faculty. This distinction was maintained by the Schoolmen. Yet since Kant, the word reason has been used to shelter a bewildering chaos of notions. Besides using reason (Vernunft) as distinguished from the faculties of conception (Verstand) and Judgment (Urteilskraft), Kant employed the word in a transcendental sense as the function of subsuming under the unity of the ideas the concepts and rules of the understanding. Subsequent German philosophers, as Schopenhauer complained, “tried, with shameless audacity, to smuggle in under this name an entirely spurious faculty of immediate, metaphysical so-called super-sensuous knowledge”.
DISCURSIVE THINKING
In its general sense, therefore, reason may be attributed to God, and an angel may be called rational. But in its narrower meaning reason is man’s differentia, at once his necessity and his privilege; that by which he is “a little less than the angels”, and that by which he excels the brutes. Reasoning, as St. Thomas says, is a defect of intellect. True, in certain acts our mind functions as intellect; there are immediate truths (ámesa) and first principles (archaí) which we intuite or grasp with our intellect; and in such verities there can be no deception or error. On this point the Scholastic system may be said to be absolutely intellectualist or noocentric. The meanest intellect is, to use an expression of St. Augustine, capax Dei. Within a certain region our cognitive faculties are absolutely infallible. Yet the Scholastics also unanimously hold that man’s specific mark is ratiocination or discursus. Some indeed, like St. Augustine (who was intent on his analogy between logos in man and in the Blessed Trinity), insist on the intuitional aspect of our mental operations, and pass over the actual process as a whole. Yet none denied that in this life our knowledge is a thing of shreds and patches, laboriously woven from the threads of sense. It is only in patria, for instance, that God’s existence will be to us as self-evident as the principle of contradiction is now. The beatific vision will, in fact, be not only as evident, but also as immediate as our present intuition of personal consciousness. But then we shall be on a level with the angels, who are subsistent intelligences or pure intuitives. An angel, in Scholastic philosophy, is practically the equivalent of noûs (intellectus, intellegentia) when used by such writers as Aristotle, Porphyry, Plotinus, or Pseudo-Dionysius, to denote not a faculty, but a species of being.
Opposed to this ideal intellection, so characteristic of Scholastic angelology, is our actual human experience, which is a gignómenon, a coming to be. Man is rational in the sense that he is a being who arrives at conclusions from premises. Our intellectual life is a process, a voyage of discovery; our knowledge is not a static ready-made whole; it is rather an organism instinct with life and growth. Each new conclusion becomes the basis of further inference. Hence, too, the word reason is used to signify a premise or ground of knowledge, as distinguished from a cause or real ground. So important is this distinction that one may say herein lies the nucleus of all philosophy. The task of the philosopher is to distinguish the a priori of logic form from the a priori of time; and that this task is a difficult one is testified by the existence of the many systems of psychologism and evolutionism. Reasoning, therefore, must be asserted to be a process sui generis. This is perhaps the best answer to give to the question, so much discussed by the old logicians, as to what kind of causative influence the premises exert on the conclusion. We can only say, they validate it, they are its warrant. For inference is not a mere succession in time; it is a nexus thought-of, not merely an association between thoughts. An irrational conclusion or a misleading association is as much a fact and a result as a correct conclusion; the existence of the latter is explained only by its logical parentage. Hence the futility of trying to account completely for the existence of a human thought–the conclusion of a train of reasoning–simply by the accompanying sense-data and psychological associations. The question of validity is prior to all problems of genesis; for rational knowledge can never be the product of irrational conditions.
Allowing then the indefinability of ratiocination, we may proceed to ask if inference is homogeneous; in other words, are there different forms of reasoning? This raises the difficult question as to whether deduction and induction are ultimately irreducible modes of reasoning. The issue is usually confused by a very narrow definition of the syllogism, which has to be fitted into the word-grooves prescribed by syntax. But if, developing Aristotle’s thought, we regard a syllogism as the unit of reasoning, then we may define it as the inference of a relation between A and C from a relation of A to B compounded with a relation of B to C. As an illustration we might instance Mill’s famous example of the village matron’s inference. Mill calls it reasoning from particulars by analogy; but it can easily be seen to be a syllogism; this drug (A) cured my Lucy (B), who had the same sickness as this neighbour’s child (C), and hence will cure this child (C). All reasoning seems to consist in such unit steps, and it seems misleading to talk of inference vi materiæ; material and formal are relative terms.
PSYCHOLOGY OF REASONING
There is an important sense, however, in which the epithet “material” has been applied to reasoning, to denote illation in which the relational formality has not yet been dissected out. The same laws of thought rule the philosopher’s reasoning and the peasant’s, but the latter’s conclusion will only be fairly certain when its matter comes within his usual cognizance. A man can reason well about familiar matter; but, unless he has explicitly examined the illative process, he will hesitate and err when dealing with new subject-matter. The mistakes of inventors like Newton and Leibniz are very instructive on this point. We are all, then, as Newman put it, more or less departmental; we reason with unequal facility on different subjects. Does it follow that in such cases of concrete informal reasoning there is a rational surplusage of assurance over evidence? This does not seem so clear, and cannot be answered without some analysis. Long before the dawn of modern psychology, Aristotle emphasized the fact that we never think without having an accompanying sense-process, whether it be a visual image, or an auditory symbol or even the motor impression of a word. The Scholastics also admitted this, and indeed many urged the necessity of this conversio ad phantasmata as the explanation of our piecemeal ratiocinative mode of learning. But this is not equivalent to saying that all reasoning can be exactly formulated, crystallized, as it were, into words. Language, after all, is merely a conventional drapery of our thought, which is convenient for logical analysis and for communicating with others. But do we not in ordinary life often syllogize in sights and reason in sounds? Does not our mind in its inferences leap far ahead of the sluggish machinery of language? And which of us has ever succeeded in fully analyzing his most commonplace attitude or emotion? To account, then, for the major part of our existence we must admit something analogous to the Aristotelean phrónesis) whether we call it the illative sense, or the artistic reason, or implicit thought. The main thing to observe is that it is not a special faculty. It is our reason acting under disabilities of language rather than of thought; for, after all, evidence is for ourselves while demonstration has reference to the audience.
REASON AND FEELING
These experiences have, however, been interpreted in an anti-intellectualist sense. The Pragmatist school regards reasoning as completely determined by its relevance to purpose or interest. And, again, many philosophers (Kant, the Modernists, and many Protestant theologians under the influence of Schleiermacher) have exaggerated the dualism between head and heart. In fact, a species of epistemological mysticism has been devised (cf. Gefüsqlaube, raisons du coeur, etc.). So far as this bears on the problem of reason, we may briefly state the case. It is true that our reason works purposively–that is, reason is selective of our subject-matter, but it is not creative or transforming. Nature is an ordered cosmos of which we form a part, so that every object in it has a “practical” bearing on our lives, is connected with our rational, sensitive, or natural appetency. The known is never completely out of resonance with our volitions and emotions. To affirm anything, or to reason about a subject, is at once to take up a position before it. This is especially true of moral and religious matter, and indeed the emotional genesis of ethical convictions has often been urged as a proof of their irrationality. But we should not forget that the liability to be influenced by emotional causes is not confined to ethical or religious reasoning. To put the case generally, we may ask: What precisely is meant by regarding feeling (or will) as forming with reason a co-ordinate source of knowledge? (Cf. G.E. Moore “Principia Ethica”, sec. 79-80.) It may be meant that to have a certain feeling towards a conclusion is the same as to have reasoned it; and this is true in the sense that the complex “feeling” may include ratiocination. But when I draw a conclusion, I do not mean that I prefer it or am affected by it. And the fact that the two things can be distinguished is fatal to the assumed co-ordination between emotion and reason. As St. Thomas urged against the pseudo-mystics and Augustinians of all ages, volition is possible only in so far as it includes cognition; and, we may add, emotion is a mode of experience, only inasmuch as it presupposes knowledge.
Again, it may be meant that, without certain experiences of feeling and willing we should not be able to draw certain ethical conclusions. This may be admitted as a psychological fact, viz. that there are many exercises of reason which we shall not correctly perform without an ethical habituation (ethismiô tini, as Aristotle says). In this connection it is interesting to note that Cardinal Newman’s object in writing the “Grammar of Assent” was “to show that a right moral state of mind germinates or even generates good intellectual principles”. This is very far from countenancing the Kantian view of the practical reason. The School admits a practical reason or “synteresis” (Gewissen, psychological conscience), in the sense of a natural habit of moral Principles. But St. Thomas strenuously denies that it is specialis potentia ratione altior (a special faculty higher than reason).
ANIMALS AND REASON
Finally, a word may be added on the so-called reason of animals. Man is called animal rationale; this expression stands for what Aristotle might call zôon logistikón. The word zôov (in German, Lebewesen), which Aristotle applied even to God, does not mean “animal”, but “living being”. Is there then, any rational animal? Catholic philosophy attributes to animals a faculty (vis æstimativa) whose function, analogous to that of reason, might, for want of a better name, be called “estimation”. Such a faculty also exists in man, but in a higher form, and was called by the Scholastics ratio particularis or vis cogitativa. Unless animals had this organic faculty, it is hard to see how they could apprehend those pragmatic relations (intentioned) such as utility, danger, etc., which are not objects of external sense. To this extent we may allow that the psychic life of brute animals is one of “meanings” and “values”. In some way they apprehend aspects and relations. Otherwise such complex co-ordinations as those required for nest-architecture and food-quest would be inconceivable. The extreme views of Bethe, Uexküll, and others almost imply a return to Cartesian Mechanicism, and really refute themselves. The danger lies rather in the anthropomorphic exaggeration of the powers of the animal mind. Experience has shown how fatally easy it is to read human feelings and reasonings into the “mind” of one’s favourite cat or pet lapdog. Continuous, patient observations, like those of Mrs. Mary Austin on sheep or of Professor Yerkes on the dancing-mouse, are worth any number of isolated anecdotes. It may be surely affirmed that there is not a single unambiguous record of animal ratiocination. Such experiments as those of Thorndike (on hungry cats shut up in a cage and forced to learn the way out to food) are easily explained by the gradual stereotyping of association between visual impression and motor response, to the exclusion of other random associations. That animals are incapable of rational valuation is confirmed by the recent observations of Forel, Plateau, and others, who have shown that bees (and probably all insects) have no memory of facts, but only of time and distance. Reason, therefore, is still the exclusive prerogative of man. (See DEDUCTION; INDUCTION; INSTINCT; INTELLECT; INTUITION; KNOWLEDGE.)
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ALFRED J. RAHILLY Transcribed by Rick McCarty
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Reason
denotes that function of our intelligence which has reference to the attainment of a particular class of truths. We know a great many things by immediate or actual experience. Our senses tell us that we are thirsty, that we hear a sound, that we are affected by light. These facts are truths of sense or of immediate knowedge, and do not involve the reason. Reason comes into play when we know a thing not immediately, but by some indirect process; as when, from seeing a river unusually swollen, we believe that there have been heavy rains at its sources. Here the mere sense tells us only that the river is high. It is by certain transitions of thought, or by the employment of our thinlking powers, that we come to know the other circumstance that in a remote part of the country there have been heavy rains.
In ascertaining these truths of reason or of inference, as they are called. there are various steps or operations, described ulnder (different names. Thus we have (1) Deduction, or Syllogism; (2) Induction; and( (3) Generalization of notions, of which Abstraction and Definition are various phases. These are well represented by their several designations. The nature of the function or faculty denominated Reason, or the Reasoning Faculty, can be explained by showing how it results from the fundamental powers of the intelligence.
There is anoter anand peculiar simgniication attached to the word reason, growing out of the philosophy of Kant (q.v.), which maintains a distinction between reason and understanding, the latter being that faculty called by the Greeks , and by Hamilton called the Regulative Faculty. See Fleming and Krauth, Vocab. of Philosophy, s.v.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Reason
(Lat. ratio, Ger. Vernunft) In Kant
The special mental faculty (distinct from sensibility and understanding) which in thinking Ideas of absolute completeness and unconditionedness transcends the conditions of possible experience. See Ideas of Pure Reason.
All those mental functions and relations characterized by spontaneity rather than receptivity In this sense, reason includes both reason (1) and the understanding, but excludes the sensibility.
The source of all a priori synthetic forms in experience. In this sense, reason includes elements of sensibility, understanding and reason (1). When Kant says, “reason is a law-giver to Nature,” he employs the term in the third sense. See Kantianism, Understanding, Ratio.
— O.F.K.
Fuente: The Dictionary of Philosophy
Reason
USE OF, IN RELIGION. The sublime, incomprehensible nature of some of the Christian doctrines has so completely subdued the understanding of many pious men, as to make them think it presumptuous to apply reason in any way to the revelations of God; and the many instances in which the simplicity of truth has been corrupted by an alliance with philosophy confirm them in the belief that it is safer, as well as more respectable, to resign their minds to devout impressions, than to exercise their understandings in any speculations upon sacred subjects. Enthusiasts and fanatics of all different names and sects agree in decrying the use of reason, because it is the very essence of fanaticism to substitute, in place of the sober deductions of reason, the extravagant fancies of a disordered imagination, and to consider these fancies as the immediate illumination of the Spirit of God. Insidious writers in the deistical controversy have pretended to adopt those sentiments of humility and reverence, which are inseparable from true Christians, and even that total subjection of reason to faith which characterizes enthusiasts. A pamphlet was published about the middle of the last century that made a noise in its day, although it is now forgotten, entitled, Christianity not founded on Argument, which, while to a careless reader it may seem to magnify the Gospel, does in reality tend to undermine our faith, by separating it from a rational assent; and Mr. Hume, in the spirit of this pamphlet, concludes his Essay on Miracles with calling those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Christian religion who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason: Our most. holy religion, he says, with a disingenuity very unbecoming his respectable talents, is founded on faith, not on reason; and, mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity. The church of Rome, in order to subject the minds of her votaries to her authority, has reprobated the use of reason in matters of religion. She has revived an ancient position, that things may be true in theology which are false in philosophy; and she has, in some instances, made the merit of faith to consist in the absurdity of that which was believed.
The extravagance of these positions has produced, since the Reformation, an opposite extreme. While those who deny the truth of revelation consider reason as in all respects a sufficient guide, the Socinians, who admit that a revelation has been made, employ reason as the supreme judge of its doctrines, and boldly strike out of their creed every article that is not altogether conformable to those notions which may be derived from the exercise of reason. These controversies concerning the use of reason in matters of religion are disputes, not about words, but about the essence of Christianity. But a few plain observations are sufficient to ascertain where the truth lies in this subject.
The first use of reason in matters of religion is to examine the evidences of revelation. For, the more entire the submission which we consider as due to every thing that is revealed, we have the more need to be satisfied that any system which professes to be a divine revelation does really come from God.
After the exercise of reason has established in our minds a firm belief that Christianity is of divine original, the second use of reason is to learn what are the truths revealed. As these truths are not in our days communicated to any by immediate inspiration, the knowledge of them is to be acquired only from books transmitted to us with satisfying evidence that they were written above seventeen hundred years ago, in a remote country and foreign language, under the direction of the Spirit of God. In order to attain the meaning of these books we must study the language in which they were written; and we must study also the manners of the times, and the state of the countries, in which the writers lived; because these are circumstances to which an original author is often alluding, and by which his phraseology is generally affected; we must lay together different passages in which the same word or phrase occurs, because without this labour we cannot obtain its precise signification; and we must mark the difference of style and manner which characterizes different writers, because a right apprehension of their meaning often depends upon attention to this difference. All this supposes the application of grammar, history, geography, chronology, and criticism in matters of religion; that is, it supposes that the reason of man had been previously exercised in pursuing these different branches of knowledge, and that our success in attaining the true sense of Scripture depends upon the diligence with which we avail ourselves of the progress that has been made in them. It is obvious that every Christian is not capable of making this application. But this is no argument against the use of reason, of which we are now speaking. For they who use translations and commentaries rely only upon the reason of others, instead of exercising their own. The several branches of knowledge have been applied in every age by some persons for the benefit of others; and the progress in sacred criticism, which distinguishes the present times, is nothing else but the continued application, in elucidating the Scripture, of reason enlightened by every kind of subsidiary knowledge, and very much improved in this kind of exercise by the employment which the ancient classics have given it since the revival of letters.
After the two uses of reason that have been illustrated, a third comes to be mentioned, which may be considered as compounded of both. Reason is of eminent use in repelling the attacks of the adversaries of Christianity. When men of erudition, of philosophical acuteness, and of accomplished taste, direct their talents against our religion, the cause is very much hurt by an unskilful defender. He cannot unravel their sophistry; he does not see the amount and the effect of the concessions which he makes to them; he is bewildered by their quotations, and he is often led by their artifice upon dangerous ground. In all ages of the church there have been weak defenders of Christianity; and the only triumphs of the enemies of our religion have arisen from their being able to expose the defects of those methods of defending the truth which some of its advocates had unwarily chosen. A mind trained to accurate and philosophical views of the nature and the amount of evidence, enriched with historical knowledge, accustomed to throw out of a subject all that is minute and irrelative, to collect what is of importance within a short compass, and to form the comprehension of a whole, is the mind qualified to contend with the learning, the wit, and the sophistry of infidelity. Many such minds have appeared in this honourable controversy during the course of this and the last century; and the success has corresponded to the completeness of the furniture with which they engaged in the combat. The Christian doctrine has been vindicated by their masterly exposition from various misrepresentations; the arguments for its divine original have been placed in their true light; and the attempts to confound the miracles and prophecies upon which Christianity rests its claim, with the delusions of imposture, have been effectually repelled. Christianity has, in this way, received the most important advantages from the attacks of its enemies; and it is not improbable that its doctrines would never have been so thoroughly cleared from all the corruptions and subtleties which had attached to them in the progress of ages, nor the evidences of its truths have been so accurately understood, nor its peculiar character been so perfectly discriminated, had not the zeal and abilities which have been employed against it called forth in its defence some of the most distinguished masters of reason. They brought into the service of Christianity the same weapons which had been drawn for her destruction, and, wielding them with confidence and skill in a good cause, became the successful champions of the truth.
The fourth use of reason consists in judging of the truths of religion. Every thing which is revealed by God comes to his creatures from so high an authority, that it may be rested in with perfect assurance as true. Nothing can be received by us as true which is contrary to the dictates of reason, because it is impossible for us to receive at the same time the truth and the falsehood of a proposition. But many things are true which we do not fully comprehend; and many propositions, which appear incredible when they are first enunciated, are found, upon examination, such as our understandings can readily admit. These principles embrace the whole of the subject, and they mark out the steps by which reason is to proceed in judging of the truths of religion. We first examine the evidences of revelation. If these satisfy our understandings, we are certain that there can be no contradiction between the doctrines of this true religion, and the dictates of right reason. If any such contradiction appear, there must be some mistake; by not making a proper use of our reason in the interpretation of the Gospel, we suppose that it contains doctrines which it does not teach; or we give the name of right reason to some narrow prejudices which deeper reflection, and more enlarged knowledge, will dissipate; or we consider a proposition as implying a contradiction, when, in truth, it is only imperfectly understood. Here, as in every other case, mistakes are to be corrected by measuring back our steps. We must examine closely and impartially the meaning of those passages which appear to contain the doctrine; we must compare them with one another; we must endeavour to derive light from the general phraseology of Scripture and the analogy of faith; and we shall generally be able, in this way, to separate the doctrine from all those adventitious circumstances which give it the appearance of absurdity. If a doctrine which, upon the closest examination, appears unquestionably to be taught in Scripture, still does not approve itself to our understanding, we must consider carefully what it is that prevents us from receiving it. There may be preconceived notions hastily taken up which that doctrine opposes; there may be pride of understanding that does not readily submit to the views which it communicates; or reason may need to be reminded, that we must expect to find in religion many things which we are not able to comprehend. One of the most important offices of reason is to recognize her own limits. She never can be moved, by any authority, to receive as true what she perceives to be absurd. But, if she has formed a just estimate of human knowledge, she will not shelter her presumption in rejecting the truths of revelation under the pretence of contradictions that do not really exist; she will readily admit that there may be in a subject some points which she knows, and others of which she is ignorant; she will not allow her ignorance of the latter to shake the evidence of the former, but will yield a firm assent to that which she does understand, without presuming to deny what is beyond her comprehension. And thus, availing herself of all the light which she now has, she will wait in humble hope for the time when a larger measure shall be imparted.