Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of reason as a way of knowing

The discussion of reason in relation to knowledge has been the focal point of debate ever since the early days of philosophy. The formulation of the concept “reason” and the enquiries into its inner workings have changed the way we think of knowledge and the process of knowing.
Depending on the importance attributed to reason, the scope and the validity of our knowledge changes. If, on the one hand, we invest too much into reason, indicating it as the sole site and guarantor of knowledge, we end up restricting the cognitive field to analytical tenets. If, on the other, we base learning on experience bypassing reason altogether, we only achieve a type of knowledge entirely dependent on contingency and therefore too vulnerable to confutation. In other words, accepting this second hypothesis we admit that nothing of what we know is absolutely true or can claim to be so. In order to understand the relationship between reason and knowledge it is necessary to look at how this evolved.

From Wisdom to Knowledge

Perhaps the oldest form of knowledge is that of the fable or legend. In ancient Greece, the ensemble of poems and writings such as Homer’s work was considered to be the summa of all knowledge. Medicine, history, politics, all was explained and contained within the corpus of mythology.
Around the fifth century BC, with the expansion of cities and the evolving of more complex communities, the need for a less general understanding, a more reliable and detailed system of information arose. Numerous groups of people required a better knowledge of health related practices: the notions referred by old tales about bandaging and primitive ointments, for instance, did not suffice anymore the demands of a growing community. Likewise, bigger concentrations of people required better administrative skills compared to tribal hierarchies.
Knowledge as intended within the mythological scope was heavily influenced by magic, religion, belief in the arcane. The authority of a tenet was measured exclusively against its coherence with tradition. Once new, more specific fields of knowledge came into existence, so did the need for a different implant of knowledge itself. This is how Western Philosophy was born: out of the desire for knowledge and the needs of a growing community.
The birth of philosophy signs a shift of purpose. If mythology offered a wisdom made of given tenets, not to be processed intellectually but merely accepted and taken for granted, philosophy’s aim was that of a knowledge produced through reasoning.

Reason and the Search for Truth

The kind of knowledge produced by reasoning is different from mythical wisdom. While the poet, inspired by the Muses, writes and passes down notions that cannot be discussed or refuted due to their mystical nature, the philosopher proposes a discourse that is based on a search for norms and rules that can distinguish truth for falsehood. Relying on reason then means that the guarantee given by inspiration is no longer available to the thinker.
The function of reason is that of finding the norms and rules of truth. A wisdom that relies on divine or mystical inspiration implies that we cannot know by ourselves without an external input. This is particularly true regarding knowledge of a metaphysical nature. But through reason and its workings, namely logic, philosophy can aspire to a knowledge which is accessed directly, without the mediation of an oracle or the intercession of a divinity.

Reason and This Acquisition of Knowledge

We commonly say that humans learn by trial and error, in other words, through experience. But experience only produces empirical knowledge. This is necessarily limited, because it is entirely dependent on contingency, and therefore cannot address deeper questions in life. Empirical knowledge cannot satisfy our questions about Existence or about God. In a word, empirical knowledge cannot do much about metaphysics. This is because this kind of knowing is neither necessary nor universal and in order to solve such questions it would have to be both. The statement “all swans are white” is clearly an empirical notion. It is formulated on the basis of observation and is not a necessary truth. One could easily conceive of black or blue swans. Although an elaboration of empirical observation and therefore implying the intervention of reason, even this kind of speculation has not a universal or necessary character. Kant says that this kind of judgement expresses generality instead of universality. Moreover, this general truthfulness is only a supposed one rather than a proven one. The implication behind such statements such as “all swans are white” is: “as far as it has been observed” Kant, (Critique of Pure Reason; p. 2). In principle, it is always possible to find exception to rules based on empirical observation.
There is another kind of knowledge, like exact sciences, that transcend mere observation. Mathematical tenets have a necessary and universal quality that surpasses the generality achieved through experience. The fact that “the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to 180 degrees” expresses a type of knowledge that is both necessary, because a triangle cannot be conceived of if not in this terms, and universal, because it affirms something which is true for all triangles. Where does such knowledge come from? It is certainly true that a pupil learns through experience the rule about triangles (and geometry in general). But it is not necessary to observe a considerable amount of triangles to verify the truthfulness of such statement. In other words, the truth value of the tenet does not reside in our experiencing its veracity over and over. If this was the case we would also have to admit, as we have seen above, that an exception to the rule was also possible. Therefore the truthfulness of mathematical judgements is given by something other than experience. The guarantor of truth is, in this case, reason itself.

Problems With Knowledge Founded Exclusively on Reason

Even admitting that reason can guarantee an a priori knowledge in the form of scientific tenets, we soon find that such judgements are of a very limited scope. In other words, geometrical or mathematical postulates do not advance our knowledge in any way. The said tenets are nothing more than tautologies. The notion about the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is not the fruit of an assumption or an intellectual process: it is merely a further explanation of the concept of triangle itself. As such, the statement does not add anything to the knowledge of triangles we already have. It follows that such knowledge is nothing more than a mechanical elaboration of notions already known.
In order to achieve a knowledge capable of being at once true and an advance compared to the already known, it is necessary to bring together rationality and experience. Kant does that in his Critique Of Pure Reason by demonstrating the objectivity of the a priori concept (categories) of reasons. Without this objectivity it would be impossible to consider valid anything that comes from the empirical plane. Reason therefore functions as a sort regulator of experience, giving us the capacity of discerning true data from false.

Conclusion

Finally, we can conclude that reason is fundamental in the process of knowing. Without it, knowledge would amount to a collection of data to be taken uncritically and accepted on trust only as in the case of mythological wisdom. Still, reason alone cannot supply us with knowledge. The tenets that can be processed through reason alone do nothing for our betterment which is the main purpose of knowledge. We must therefore reach a compromise that sees reason as a filter for experience, a refining tool through which empirical data must go through in order to be accepted as knowledge.