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Hi all, I hope everyone is keeping well. It has come to the time I have marry two seemingly contrary beliefs or concepts I hold, discovering just what I mean by them. Writing helps me do this. So, it’s that before I have said that reason is impulsive an emotional act, too that reason is the contraposition to emotion. More so that it is the alternative to emotion governing one’s life. Reason is described as the faculty of relational argument or judgment, I think (personally) this faculty is gift from God. It is too described as deduction, sound mind and sanity. I think all these definitions a are true, but reason is something more—it is an action of the mind. It is a type of behaviour, and we know of behaviour that it is emotional. The reason I would say the reason is impulsive is that at arises out of discomfort, out of a conflict in the mind. It is emotional in as much as it is a compulsion to behave in such as way as to reason.  Yet it is too un-emotional in its working, it is the act by compulsion to try and set aside emotional values.

It is hard to reason precisely because, we are emotional creatures. It is in our DNA to feel emotion, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Emotion has its place in our lives, love is emotion, compassion is emotion, concern is emotion and care too is emotion. Yet emotion too is hate, anger, resentment, revenge, disgust, intolerance. So, it is necessary to have something to govern our emotions, that something is reason. Too that act of reason is emotion in the first instance, it is a function of the mind. Yet its working isn’t emotional, I find this hard to understand myself it is a sort of mystery. Reason is perhaps the most mysterious act of the mind; it arises form conflict and confusion. It is this discomfort this spark that motivates reason. Witch is remarkable, it produces rational judgments where emotional judgments would result in error, terror and injustice. It results in growth of the self and the expansion of the human sphere of knowledge, through such things as science, philosophy, psychology and medicine. Yet without emotion these things as history can testify, can be evil. So it is that emotion has its place in judgment too. Yet we don’t always get it right, emotion is very powerful and often clouds our judgments and can equally be evil. So, it is hard to do judge well, (perhaps that where wisdom comes in) we get attached to the judgments of emotions. Yet reason if allowed can be enough to change a mind, hence reason to is transformative both in the self and towards others. Reason changes minds, but reason needs time where emotional judgments do not. Yet it is not by virtue of reason that something is good. Yet in all this it remains that reason is an impulse to reason, the motivation to reason is emotional. Its bazar that from emotion– deduction without emotion can arise.

Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy describes reason or practical reason as “…the general human capacity, through reflection, the question of what to do.”, it goes on to say that it is practical in two senses in its subject matter and in so far as it is concerned with action. So, it is fair to describe reason as a problem-solving faculty. Its how we use it that counts, our choices define us.  We use reason when we are confronted with a problem, this can be a problem of the mind and a problem of action or what to do. However, we do not all perceive the same and feel the same about things. Yet reason is still an action in itself, so reason must be motivated by something.  We all to a certain degree have this impulse. This I would say is dissonance within the self, forcing one to reflect. confusion forcing one to reflect or not knowing forcing one reflect. All these things are emotional states; hence reason must be an impulse an emotional act. Think about what one feels wen one doesn’t know something, it’s an emptiness a feeling of dread or panic in short, a feeling of anxiety. We describe confusion as a disturbance of consciousness, an inability to engage in ordinary thought. Dissonance is a feeling of disagreement, un-harmoniousness. While it is true people are able to overcome these states and ignore them it is not true of everyone. These states can be deeply disruptive if not delt with, tearing the soul apart in a kind of civil war. The outcome is often not good.  So it is that we have a her a clear motivation for reason, and description of why it is important.  So how then if it is emotional does it produces judgments without emotion.

Reason is described as reflection, as deduction. Reason forces us to look at the facts, to be objective and deduce from the truth, from reality. Not our emotional distortions of reality. However, this can be unfeeling and cruel so we must be careful, we have a duty to be compassionate, loving and caring. To reflect means to make apparent, to express or manifest the truth. To manifest means to make obvious, clear or apparent. It is the act of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions. Hence by this process of looking at facts we can expel the emotional juments and discern the truth of something or of the self. The truth of how one truly feels about something, or why its not good to feel that way about something or someone. At times one must apply feeling to our judgments yet know when and when not to is hard. The point is not to be rules my emotions yet still let our emotions guide us. It is a hard balance to find. We use two types of reasoning, deductive and inductive. Inductive reasoning aims at developing a theory, deductive reasoning aims at proving that theory. The process of inductive reasoning can be clouded by emotion and deductive reasoning gets to the truth of it. Our biases can be a big issue in this process of deductive reasoning. Too, we must keep in mind that false reasoning exists, things such as fallacy. Our reasoning can be flawed and imperfect. Emotion can still get in the way it can also help, it is simply the case that we have to work with what have the best that we can.

Well that just my thoughts, rather confused I think and hard to fallow. I think though for myself iv come to better understanding of reason and exactly what I mean when I use the word reason. I hope you at least found it interesting and thoughtful or thought provoking. Please leave your comments let me know what your thoughts are, where have gone wrong if at all, what speaks to you and what doesn’t. Where is the flaw in my logic, please let me know I’m truly interested in what you all have to say. Anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings and stay well all.