The Limits of Reason
August 7, 2009
The human understanding is subject to influence from the will and the emotions, a fact that creates a fanciful knowledge; man prefers to believe what he wants to be true.
– Francis Bacon, The New Organon (1620: Cambridge UP, 2000), p. 44
Lurking behind all philosophical conversations, and particularly conversations about religion and ethics which hope to make demands upon the hearers, is this fear. Perhaps we are really not controlled by rational, deliberative reflection. Perhaps we are never swayed by observation, thought and argument. Perhaps we only ever pay lip-service to rationality, slapping a proposition, argument or idea with the term ‘reasonable’ or ‘important’ or ‘good’ when we have deep and hidden reasons for wanting to believe such a thing.
How open are you to having your mind changed?
