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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.
It overlaps with psychology, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, logic, and probability theory. Psychological experiments on how humans and other animals reason have been carried out for over 100 years. An enduring question is whether or not people have the capacity to be rational.
Santayana holds that reason bases itself on science, as "science contains all trustworthy knowledge." Though he acknowledges the limitations of science and reason in finding metaphysical truths, he holds the scientific method as "merely a shorthand description of regularities observed in our experience" and says in Reason in Common Sense: "faith in the intellect...is the only faith yet ...
Rationalism has a philosophical history dating from antiquity.The analytical nature of much of philosophical enquiry, the awareness of apparently a priori domains of knowledge such as mathematics, combined with the emphasis of obtaining knowledge through the use of rational faculties (commonly rejecting, for example, direct revelation) have made rationalist themes very prevalent in the history ...
The modern [1] formulation of the principle is usually ascribed to early Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz.Leibniz formulated it, but was not an originator. [2] The idea was conceived of and utilized by various philosophers who preceded him, including Anaximander, [3] Parmenides, Archimedes, [4] Plato and Aristotle, [5] Cicero, [5] Avicenna, [6] Thomas Aquinas, and Spinoza. [7]
Russell's work contributed to philosophy of science's development into a separate branch of philosophy. Much of Russell's thinking about science is expressed in his 1914 book, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy , [ 20 ] which influenced the logical positivists .
A philosophical discipline ceases to be philosophy and becomes a science once definite knowledge of its topic is possible. In this sense, philosophy is the midwife of the sciences. Philosophy itself makes no progress because the newly created science takes all the credit. [1]