Rational and Reasonable

Conversation 2, Socrates Worldview 2/22

Adeimantus ordered his coffee and made his way to where Socrates was already sitting, newspaper in front of him. He sat down opposite Socrates.

ADEIMANTUS. Good morning, Socrates. I am pleased to find you here.

SOCRATES. Good morning, Adeimantus, I am pleased to see you. I am here every day. If you find I am not here, raise the alarm.

A. You are a man of leisure, I see.

S. I am a man of independent means, and regular habits.

A. So, you're rich?

S. Adeimantus, we could have a philosophical discussion about what it means to be rich. As it happens, my income is modest, but quite adequate for the simple life Petal and I lead. We live comfortably within our means and lack for nothing we desire. You could say that we are rich.

A. Petal? Is that your wife?

S. Indeed she is. But we will not talk about her today. She is worthy of an entire morning’s discussion, or perhaps the discussions of many mornings. Today we must get down to business and delve into the matter we raised yesterday.

A. Yes. You were going to explain how you can be both scientist and believer without being a hypocrite or soft in the head.

S. Quite so. But first we must lay some groundwork. I suggested that it is not irrational to adhere to a materialist view of the world, neither is it irrational to believe in a spiritual world, with boundaries to apply in both cases. Where shall we start?

A. I am at a loss to say, Socrates, it seems such a huge topic.

S. Shall we begin by examining what we understand by ‘rational’? We should also consider what is meant by ‘reasonable’, since these terms are foundational to the entire discussion.

A. Very well.

S. Tell me then, Adeimantus, what you understand the terms ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ to mean, and the difference between them.

A. I think they are similar in meaning, although ‘rational’ is more to do with the process of reasoning while ‘reasonable’ contains an element of judgement.

S. You are ‘on the money’, Adeimantus. We can agree that ‘rational’ means ‘proceeding or derived from reason’ (The Little Macquarie Dictionary 1993) and that ‘reasonable’ means ‘agreeable to reason or sound judgement’ (The Little Macquarie Dictionary 1993).

A. Quite so.

S. While we are at it, we might also agree that ‘reason’, as a noun, means ‘the intellectual faculty by which things are judged’ and as a verb means to ‘form or try to reach conclusions by connected thought’ (The Little Oxford Dictionary of Current English 1962).

A. Precisely.

S. So, when we say it is rational to believe something, what do we mean?

A. I am sure that you will enlighten me, Socrates.

S. If we are going to proceed somewhere by a rational process, must we not begin somewhere?

A. Naturally.

S. Our starting point is some premise, or axiom if you like?

A. Exactly.

S. And the endpoint of our reasoning, that is, of our rational process, is only as good as our initial premise?

A. Yes, the rational process, which is the application of logic, cannot add or subtract to what is inherent in the initial premise, or premises.

S. And we must examine whether the conclusion of our logical deduction is in reasonable agreement with the knowledge of the way things are. If so, it is rational to believe in the truth of our initial premise. If not, we must revise our initial premise. Is that not so?

A. Yes, that is what it means to be rational.

S. So when we say, ‘in reasonable agreement with the knowledge of the way things are,’ do we mean consistent with the evidence that is available?

A. Yes, that is what we mean.

S. What about judgements for which there is no conclusive evidence?

A. Can you give me an example, Socrates?

S. Suppose I base my system of morality on the premise that moral principles must be applied equally to all people. Do you think there is evidence to support such a position?

A. Not convincing evidence. Many people subscribe to such a principle, but there have been many whose actions showed clearly that they did not, even when they said they agreed in principle.

S. So would you say that such a position is one of personal preference?

A. Yes, it is a matter of preference.

S. In what way, then, can it be rational or irrational to hold such a position?

A. I am waiting for you to tell me, Socrates.

S. A premise like the one we have just stated, which is a matter of preference, is one of the axioms for our reasoning. It is neither rational nor irrational to hold such a position. But to be rational, we must be careful that any deduction we make from such an axiom follows by logic.

A. Quite so.

S. And we must be careful that our judging of the conclusion does not inadvertently violate any other of our initial premises. For example, if we are materialists and our premise is that there is no such thing as mind or consciousness that is anything other than a function of our material bodies, then we cannot claim to have any knowledge that comes to us other than through physical processes working on our bodily senses.

A. It is obviously so. We must be careful not to make errors like that.

S. We must be ever mindful of where our reasoning faculty sits in relation to the things we are reasoning about. The truly materialist worldview that we have just described is unique in its clarity on that score. Of worldviews that admit of mind or consciousness existing independently of the material world there is an infinite variety. At one extreme, human thinking might be entirely a function of our physical bodies, while God, or some form of universal consciousness, exists separately from us. At the other extreme, we might suppose that there is one, universal consciousness that we all partake of. Intermediate between these extremes, we might have immaterial souls that receive knowledge, from time to time and perhaps imperfectly, from God. Being clear about our assumptions in this regard will help us to avoid falling into error.

A. We seem to be talking about epistemology.

S. That is so, Adeimantus, but epistemology is a very big word to produce over morning coffee!

S. (After a pause.) Here comes the waitress to clear away.

A. We had better go.

S. Perhaps we might meet earlier and ride together?

A. Let’s do that. See you tomorrow.

References

1993. The Little Macquarie Dictionary. Macquarie University, NSW: The Macquarie Library.

1962. The Little Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Third. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press.