Why Use Reason?

Can reason be given a justification, or must it simply be presupposed? There seems to be nothing we can say in defense of reason without begging the question, because any argument for reason is itself an application of reason.

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0:00 - Introduction
0:33 - Why use reason?
4:14 - Reasons to reason
16:19 - The circularity problem

[pinecone]

Michael Huemer does a lot of talks with YouTubers. I’d be interested in watching you two talk since you both have very different world views (as far as I know).
I think a lot of other people would be interested in that too.

Keep up the good work! We appreciate the time you put into these

[Kentrosauruses]

It seems like if there is some sorta circularity in using reason to justify using reason, then the fault is with the question asker than with the defender of reason.
“Why use reason?” could be restated as “What is the reason to use reason?” which is clearly asking one to use reason to justify itself. It’s like asking “What is the rule in monopoly that says you must follow the rules of monopoly?” and then getting mad when someone says “Oh yeah, that’s rule 23”
By asking “Why use reason?” the asker has already admitted that reason will convince them.

[tomcollector]

That capacity circularity distinction was really cool, I wonder what other arguments people find clever solely on the basis of them not noticing that subtlety about capacity circularity versus actually fallacious circularity.

[skube_yo]

I was thrilled with this topic and the way you present it, so cool and interesting!!! It's impressive how you can explain very subtle distinctions in a clear way. I just really freaking dig this video

[nicolasavilalucero]

I see a possible answer: when we ask for a reason of something (an event, an action, for example), we made intelligible something appealing to other thing (the reason). There are many reasons for many things, but, when somebody ask for a reason to use reason, he ask for a reason to use any element of the universe of reasons. The problem is, that this is not how the categories of reasons and totality works. We cannot give a reason to the "set" of reasons, because the "outside" of this set is the absense of reasons (we cannot "made intelligible something appealing to other thing (the reason)"). We can ask the reasons for particular events, but is a missaplication of the categories beg for a reason to the total universe of reasons.

[mesplin]

Haven't seen the video. I'm just guessing as to why use reason:
More satisfying conversation.

Suppose I didn't use reason. If someone asks "why the sky is blue", then I could reply "because I like grapes."

That response doesn't satisfy. Assuming the rational person perused and asked "how does my liking of grapes affect the sky? If I stop liking grapes, then does the sky stop being blue?"

To which I reply "my liking of grapes affects the sky by moldy socks. When I stop liking grapes then the sky is musical forklifts."

By holding a standard of language, we have better communication.

[wireless]

Great topic, great video. 👍 Thanks for the effort you put in.

[second]

Your videos are always so neat and insightful! Love them

[AndreasFroestl]

Amazing content as usual. Please never stop making these videos.

[Ansatz]

Fundamentally, reasoning is just thinking about thoughts. Rather than just having thoughts and uncritically acting upon thoughts, we have a capacity to examine our thoughts. We can break thoughts down into component parts, such as realizing that thought A is actually a conjunction of B and C. We can consider why we hold particular thoughts, and we can imagine how we would react if we were to have some thought. We can use a system of logic to structure our thoughts about thoughts and allow us to write them down and communicate them precisely.

The irrationalist position would say that we _shouldn't_ be thinking about thoughts. The video suggests that irrationalists cannot have reasons for this position and any argument for irrationalism would undermine itself, but that seems unfair to the position. An irrationalist can use reasoning, and even to hold the position of irrationalism is to have an opinion about thoughts which naturally requires thinking about thoughts. A person is irrationalist simply because when she thinks about thoughts she comes to the conclusion that thinking about thoughts is unwise. We should consider how someone might come to that conclusion and not just abstractly reject any irrationalist argument as _a priori_ self-defeating.

For example, an irrationalist might say that thinking about thoughts a waste of time and energy. Thoughts are not things in the world. You cannot eat a thought, nor does a thought give you shelter. To think about our thoughts is to turn our attention inward and distract ourselves from the world while we explore an imaginary maze of our own construction. You could spend a lifetime pondering whether A implies B, and in the end the world will have passed you by while you've accomplished nothing real.

An irrationalist might say that thinking about thoughts isn't just wasteful but can even be actively harmful. People are driven by fears and desires, and we're not mechanically precise reasoning machines, so when we engage in reasoning we tend to make mistakes. We catch some of our mistakes, but we're more likely to overlook mistakes that lead us toward conclusions that we desire and away from conclusions that we fear. The result is that reasoning becomes a gradual process of systematically fooling ourselves into believing the things that we wish to be true. We can construct vast edifices of logic to insulate us from the world by creating intricate arguments to demonstrate to ourselves that the world is how we wish it would be. Computers may potentially be relied upon to reason productively, but humans tend to get themselves into trouble when they try reasoning.

There is an obvious difficulty in trying to use arguments to convince an irrationalist to accept reason, since an irrationalist is philosophically opposed to thinking about arguments, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible. Even an irrationalist will almost certainly still engage in reasoning. It's just like a smoker who thinks that smoking is unhealthy but still smokes. We just need to present the irrationalist with a way of thinking about reasoning that leads the irrationalist away from the conclusion that we shouldn't use reasoning.

[wireless]

The last few slides were really interesting. After thinking about them for a while, I think the only way you could make the capacity-circular argument is to assert that arguments do not exist without the capacity of reason - the existence of the capacity for reason is a necessary condition for any argument to be made. In that sense reason would be a property of arguments. This touches on various realist/non-realist debates. What would a world without the capacity for reason look like? What would it mean for p->p not to exist (talking of arguments not existing seems odd, but speaking of them being ‘invalid’ or ‘unsound’ would not seem to make sense in a world without the capacity to reason on this account)

[nathangmichel]

Your videos are fantastic. I'd love to see a video on how non-naturalists in metaethics have coped with "epistemic access" objections to non-naturalist moral realism. I've never understood how it is that these non-naturalists understand our physical brains as being able to "latch on" to moral truths that are somehow out there.

[justus]

3:37
I wrote a comment about that a while ago🙂
5:25
My objection would be:
Even though that argument doesn't assume validity of reason, it only shows that to reason has benefits, the validity of reason is assumed in that moment where you make the choice to follow that over other options.

[sisyphushappy]

This is the best video you've ever made.

[leonmills]

Kane b I am a Rationalist too I want to say that on the Capacity Circularity another e.g of this circularity is found in epistemology in the case of Reliabilism where it is said that Reliabilist forms of epistemic justification end up in a kind of circularity called epistemic Bootstrapping or simply bootstrap what can you tell us about this it is often taken to go against these forms of justifcation and it seems to be an e.g of Capacity Circularity or am I coming up with something unrelated to this video?

[darcyone]

Very nice video, Kane! I've been thinking about the same topic recently, and the concepts of "rule-circularity" and "concept-circularity" were new to me. But I wonder, creating these concepts as well as thinking about and using them still depend on reason, right? And that still is annoying to me! Do you have any thoughts about that?

[zadeh]

I would recommend the book: The Outer Limits of Reason

[patricksee]

Reason is alignment of your concepts with the world. That is the justification for reason

[villekarna]

Nice video. Would this distinction between premise-circular and capacity-circular help with the Problem of Induction? We have the capacity to induction, so we don´t need a justification for it?

[thes]

I don't know if you read these, but I wonder if you could draw any connections between reason and libertarianism. Determinism almost seems to align well with irrationalism in that reason itself would only be a product of causal relationships. I don't know if you've ever discussed it, but I also wonder how this might connect to the ancient controversies of rhetoric.