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Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. [1] It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans.
In the most general terms, a reason is a consideration in an argument which justifies or explains an action, a belief, an attitude, or a fact. [1] Normative reasons are what people appeal to when making arguments about what people should do or believe. For example, that a doctor's patient is grimacing is a reason to believe the patient is in pain.
[23] [3] An inference is the mental process of reasoning that starts from the premises and arrives at the conclusion. [18] [24] But the terms "argument" and "inference" are often used interchangeably in logic. The purpose of arguments is to convince a person that something is the case by providing reasons for this belief.
Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences (French: Discours de la Méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences) is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637.
Logic and rationality have each been taken as fundamental concepts in philosophy. They are not the same thing. Philosophical rationalism in its most extreme form is the doctrine that knowledge can ultimately be founded on pure reason, while logicism is the doctrine that mathematical concepts, among others, are reducible to pure logic.
In this process of reasoning, general assertions are made based on past specific pieces of evidence. This kind of reasoning allows the conclusion to be false even if the original statement is true. [28] For example, if one observes a college athlete, one makes predictions and assumptions about other college athletes based on that one observation.
Interpretive argumentation is a dialogical process in which participants explore and/or resolve interpretations often of a text of any medium containing significant ambiguity in meaning. Interpretive argumentation is pertinent to the humanities , hermeneutics , literary theory , linguistics , semantics , pragmatics , semiotics , analytic ...
The question arises because philosophical writing does more than report results. It is a process of discovery in its own right, and the process unfolds differently in the aphorism than it does in the essay, and differently through irony than through the counter-example.