Our Direct Reasonings example essay topic

1. How does direct reason differ from garden variety intuition Well, garden-variety intuition is one species of direct reason, I suppose. Just as our deductions can be known with greater or lesser degrees of precision and certainty, so too can our direct reasonings be known with greater or lesser degrees of precision and certainty. And I take " garden-variety intuition" to be that sub-group of our direct reasonings which are known with unusually low degrees of precision and certainty. Also, garden-variety intuition is probably less self-critical and thoughtful than our better direct reasonings are; that is, garden-varietintuition is probably our knee-jerk reaction, whereas something known well through direct reason is reached after reflection and careful thought. 2.

How does direct reason differ from divine revelation Well, I presume that you don't believe in divine revelation, and neither do I. Divinerevelation is supposed to be insight that you receive directly from God or the like, which is evident to neither direct reason, indirect reason, or observation. But perhaps your real question is: Aren't direct reason and divinerevelation on epistemological par, being unfounded and outrageous claims to "knowledge" without any basis Well, I think that looking at a philosopher like Aquinas will shed a little light on this. Basically, philosophers who believed in revelation also frequently believed in "the natural light of reason", which is probably yet another synonym for direct reason. And they carefully distinguished the two.

Things known by the natural light of reason could be known by a noble pagan who merely used his intellect to consider the claim in question, whereas things known by revelation could not just be figured out. Thus, Aquinas believed that God's existence could be known by reason, whereas the Christian God could be known only by revelation. Now leaving aside his questionable proofs, the interesting thing is that eve people who believed in r elevation realized that some things are known by the immediate application of reason. They had both concepts, but found the distinction between them clear enough. But what is it that's really bugging you about direct reason I suspect that it is the popular but mistaken notion that everything must be " proven". But of course that can't be true, because first of all it leads to an infinite regress, since you would then have to prove your proofs, prove the proofs of your proofs, and so on.

And second of all it is impossible because a proof only yields truth if its premises are true, and hence on pain of circularity some premises must be known without proof. Or perhaps its because of the related notion that intuition is unreliable and must be "formalized". I see it the other way around - formalizations tend to falsify and oversimplify rather than lending extra clarity. Unless the relationship is extremely narrow to begin with. Haven't you ever made an argument and found that another person just couldn't"get it" If you clearly saw that the argument was valid, did it matter that the other person couldn't see it That's what I think about direct reason.

I see that some things are true objectively. And if other peopledon't see it, why should that shake my confidence.