display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
23945 | Reason is actually passions, guided by perspicacious reflection [Solomon] |
Full Idea: What is called 'reason' is the passions enlightened, 'illuminated' by reflection and supported by a perspicacious deliberation that the emotions in their urgency normally excluded. | |
From: Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], Intro.4) | |
A reaction: To suggest that reason more or less is emotions strikes me as missing the point of 'perspicacious', which takes in facts outside our emotional world. We excitedly climb a cliff, then stop when we see the rocks are crumbling. |
6937 | 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. |