Animal rationale
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Jan. 6th, 2012 | 17:32
This comes from a comment that I left at John C. Wright’s Journal. I am reposting the essential bit here, as I come across this particular confusion of language all the time, and may want to refer people back to my answer:
Aristotle (and, later, the Schoolmen) defined man as a rational animal: i.e., the only animal capable of reason. Neither he nor anyone else claimed that men are always rational.
Reason is a technique that we learn; it is no more innate to us than riding a bicycle. If I say that one can get from John o’ Groats to Land’s End by bicycle, the truth of that statement is not altered by the fact that some people will fall off the bicycle on the way, or take a wrong turning; or that some have never learnt to ride at all. Mutatis mutandis, the capacity of reason, as a method, to reach valid consequents given valid premises, is in no way vitiated or impugned by the fact that humans make errors in employing it. Indeed, it is only by the correct application of reason that such faults can even be identified as errors.
Edited to add (7 January, 20:32):
More shortly put, it isn’t the hammer’s fault if the carpenter hits his thumb.
Aristotle (and, later, the Schoolmen) defined man as a rational animal: i.e., the only animal capable of reason. Neither he nor anyone else claimed that men are always rational.
Reason is a technique that we learn; it is no more innate to us than riding a bicycle. If I say that one can get from John o’ Groats to Land’s End by bicycle, the truth of that statement is not altered by the fact that some people will fall off the bicycle on the way, or take a wrong turning; or that some have never learnt to ride at all. Mutatis mutandis, the capacity of reason, as a method, to reach valid consequents given valid premises, is in no way vitiated or impugned by the fact that humans make errors in employing it. Indeed, it is only by the correct application of reason that such faults can even be identified as errors.
Edited to add (7 January, 20:32):
More shortly put, it isn’t the hammer’s fault if the carpenter hits his thumb.
(no subject)
from:
friendofsophia.blogspot.com
date: Jan. 13th, 2012 15:25 (UTC)
Link
As for feeling vs. reason, I think it may be said to be the nemesis of certain elements within Lutheranism and evangelical Christianity generally, blown up out of all proportion by secular society (as often happens to religious teachings once divorced from their theological framework).
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