Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Fixation of Belief', 'Logical Necessity: Some Issues' and 'Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 4. Aims of Reason
The hallmark of rationality is setting itself an end [Kant]
     Full Idea: Rational nature separates itself out from all other things by the fact that it sets itself an end.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785], 437.82)
Reason aims to discover the unknown by thinking about the known [Peirce]
     Full Idea: The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 7)
     A reaction: I defy anyone to come up with a better definition of reasoning than that. The emphasis is on knowledge rather than truth, which you would expect from a pragmatist. …Actually the definition doesn't cover conditional reasoning terribly well.