The Power of Reason

Nigel Warburton says of John Locke, “he believed that God had given is the wherewithal to achieve knowledge of God, of our moral duty and whatever was necessary to get through life but that, ultimately, the powers of reason were limited.”

So what might the limiting factors be?

■ An actual inability to reason due to some mental incapacity. We can’t expect a baby or someone with limited thought functions to reason – they simply don’t have the capacity to reason.

■ If as Locke believed, we learn everything through experience then perhaps one might simply not have had sufficient experience to allow them to reason through something. Think of a person who has not had any education, has not traveled beyond their limited boundaries and has no contact with an outside world. Their powers of reasoning would probably be quite stunted.

■ Lastly, and perhaps the most common, might be an unwillingness to open one’s mind due to fear, dogmatic beliefs or apathy. The first two of those could be considered to be due to external factors: some influencing person or experience has shaped the thought processes of an individual.

But the latter one, apathy, is more likely due to internal factors within the individual. Things you might hear to indicate apathy would be:
· I am just not into that.
· I’m too busy to bother with all that.
· Other people have to worry about that – not me.
· Boring!

A trend noted by the Project For Excellence in Journalism, is “The
Argument Culture is giving way to something new, the Answer Culture.” Their report, The State of the News Media 2007, states: “A growing pattern has news outlets, programs and journalists offering up solutions, crusades, certainty and the impression of putting all the blur of information in clear order for people.” How convenient for all of us!

Thomas Jefferson: Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.