The Efficacy of Reason

Many species survive and thrive without rationality. Claws work because they are sharp. Camouflage works because it blends with the background. What is it about reason that makes it work? I say, reason works because it produces real knowledge of external reality. Atheists frequently seem to pooh-pooh this notion. The senses are unreliable, they say. Our interpretations are biased, they say. And that is true to some extent. So also is our sense of time unreliable and subjective. That is why we invented clocks and calendars to correct our limitations. In the same way, we have developed conceptual tools from symbolic logic to the modern scientific method to overcome fallacious thinking and interpretive bias. We have developed physical tools, from rulers to microscopes, to supplement and correct the senses. But none of that matters, they say, if the efficacy of the tools themselves is suspect since those are the products of conceptual bias and deceptive senses That kind of radical skepticism leads nowhere. And it comes with a price, a very steep one at that.