When we speak of "Reason", we are referring to human activity that manifests itself in judging, reflecting and arguing. Making good use of reason is of paramount importance in making the right decisions in everyday life. Here are some tips that will help you use your reason when choosing how to behave.
Steps
Step 1. Try to be open-minded
Errare humanum est: to err is human. None of us are infallible and often we can only see part of reality, without having the general picture of the situation. Knowing only half the facts, we come to draw erroneous conclusions, propose hypotheses, and form judgments based on the partial data available to us. Having a closed mind does not allow you to reason properly and is a mistake that everyone should try to avoid.
Step 2. Be open to points of view other than yours
Try to prove your theories. Remove all prejudices you have from your mind. Do not think that there is no other truth than the one that supports the science you have studied. If you form an opinion about someone else's point of view based on your prejudices rather than a careful analysis of the matter, you will not have brought to light the gaps in his thesis, but simply closed your eyes not to see it.
- Be enthusiastic about the idea of discovering new truths regarding topics that are unfamiliar to you. The more you get involved, the more you will learn new things, establishing new neural interconnections in your brain and improving your ability to reason.
- Read a lot and be interested in different topics.
Step 3. Seek the truth by any means possible
You never have to think that you know a subject so well that you have nothing more to learn about it.
The gold diggers were digging and looking for precious minerals and other treasures with great effort and had to rummage through mounds of earth and mud to find a small amount of that precious metal. But the work they did was not in vain: gold is still gold and will enrich those who are tenacious enough to keep looking until they find it. You must understand that the truth is more precious than gold itself
Step 4. Try to understand the difference between truth and apparent truth
In digging for gold, for example, you come across sand, stones and waste mixed with it. A superficial shimmer can deceive a beginner. The ability to distinguish true from false is acquired by practicing seeking the truth, without having prejudices or making assumptions.
Step 5. Learn to put yourself in the other person's shoes and try not to get offended by every little thing
Some people are so attached to their beliefs that they refuse even to consider the hypothesis of being wrong on matters they consider sacred or as a fact. No man is infallible. Believing to be such is like kicking reason. Be willing to accept criticism from others with enthusiasm and use it to question your beliefs, ideas and opinions.
- Be humble. Dispose of any errors or prejudices that you discover you have immediately, without reservation and with enthusiasm. This applies to any topic or issue that affects your life including the religious and political spheres.
- Of course, being humble does not mean being a doormat; make use of the criticisms leveled at you to become stronger rather than letting others attack you in your weak points. And learn to see an important difference: too aggressive criticism is just an opinion, and should not be considered as constructive feedback. Don't berate yourself just because someone else is trying to belittle you.
Step 6. Learn from others
Confucius once said: “When three men walk together, there is always something to learn. Choose to follow what is good in them and correct what is not good. You can always learn something from others, be it your parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, the priest, etc. If you notice that another person excels in some subject, follow his example trying to imitate him. If you notice that someone is making a mistake, you can learn from that too, by trying to improve to avoid making the same mistake yourself. (Remember you can't try to change someone else, but you can lead by example.)
Step 7. Don't be passionate
Doing things with passion can lead us to make serious errors of evaluation and distort the vision of the facts, to the point that you no longer allow you to think for yourself or listen to what others have to say. To be able to reason properly, it is necessary to approach an issue by being impartial and detached.
Step 8. Examine all the facts
Browse the best books covering each discipline, search the internet for the most reliable resources, and learn from the best experts who are well versed in science and have great knowledge.
Take an online college course in a subject you once thought too complex, such as physics, astronomy, or math. Challenge yourself to improve your reasoning skills
Step 9. Study and apply the logic of reasoning
- Deductive reasoning consists in deriving a certain conclusion from more general premises. In this type of reasoning, if a precise logical sequence is followed, the argument becomes valid and the conclusions are correct, if the premises are also valid. For example, if we start from the major premise, "all men are mortal" and the minor premise, "Socrates is a man", we can deduce that "Socrates is a mortal" is a valid conclusion, which must be true if the premises also I am. Deductive reasoning is in stark contrast to inductive reasoning.
- Inductive reasoning is a procedure that, starting from single particular cases, tries to establish a universal law and is used above all in formulating new theories. In inductive reasoning, specific facts do not necessarily lead to a general conclusion. For example, if you put your hand in a bag full of pebbles of an unknown color and all the pebbles you take out of the bag are white, you could assume that all the pebbles in the bag are white. This may be true, but it may not be; the conclusion can be refuted by extracting a pebble of a color other than white from the bag. The more data that is collected and the larger the sample examined, the more meaningful the “inductive reasoning process” or, as it is often called, the “conjecture” becomes. The conjecture that all the pebbles in the bag are white is more likely to be correct if a thousand pebbles are pulled out, rather than just ten. The collection of such data is part of the reasoning process that uses statistical inference and probability.
- Abductive reasoning consists in reaching a conclusion or proposing a thesis by choosing the best explanation, as in diagnoses made in medicine; the process is similar to that of induction, because the conclusion does not directly follow the premise and concerns a process that has not been observed directly. What distinguishes abduction from other reasoning processes is an attempt to favor one thesis over the others by trying to refute the latter or by demonstrating that the preferred thesis is more likely to be correct than the others starting from a series of information and more assumptions. or less questionable. For example: “This patient has several symptoms; these could have various causes, but [one diagnosis in particular] is more likely than the other possible ones. " The concept of abduction was introduced into modern logic by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce states: I use abduction in formulating a sentence to describe what I am seeing … It is not possible to make any scientific progress that goes beyond looking at emptiness, without using abduction at every step we take. " Furthermore, abductive reasoning is also used to explain a conclusion or result. "The grass is wet, so it might have rained." Investigators as well as diagnosticians are used to this kind of reasoning.
- Analogical reasoning consists in finding common traits through analogy, implicit or explicit. This form of logical reasoning infers a certain similarity of one element to another from a given point of view starting from a similarity already known between the two elements from other points of view. An analogy attributed to Samuel Johnson is "Dictionaries are like clocks; the worst is better than nothing and we can't trust even the best."
Advice
- Learn to find a balance between reason and passion. There is a time to reason and one to be passionate. Don't mix the two.
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Analogies can be expressed which consist of comparisons which are not always understood as expressions of pure reason. For example in linguistics, speech, prose or poetry, different figures of speech can be used by analogy:
- "You are my sunshine on a rainy day," It is a metaphor. A metaphor always uses an analogy; in this case a person becomes something else.
- "You are like the sun on a rainy day," a simile is called. A simile declares an explicit comparison; in this case it is a person who has the same characteristics as something else.
- "You are so sunny that you can sweep away my clouds." it is called a hyperbole. Hyperbola exaggerate an analogy and is used to amaze or create a comic effect.
- Making a conjecture logically based on a series of examples, data or symptoms is not a conclusive process, but it can lead to a more or less probable result if it is entered into through a deductive process. A conjecture is in itself an attempt to formulate a thesis that must in any case be proven after it has been formulated based on one's own deduction or judgment that arises from available, inconclusive information, partial research or continuous examination of the material available. A conjecture can consist of reasoning that serves to formulate a statement, an opinion or a conclusion by guessing; for example: "Opinionists will speculate on the outcome of the next election." It is not correct, according to the rules of logic, to reach a conclusion or to assume that a given number of samples serves to prove, beyond any doubt, a given thesis.
- In the same way that you wouldn't spend your money on a very expensive product without doing the proper research first, you shouldn't try to reason without having all the data on hand. But try not to overdo it on this point. It is not necessary to visit every mountain, lake or valley that exists on the face of the earth or create a map of the whole planet to be a good geographer, but it is preferable that you have traveled extensively around the globe rather than just exploring a piece of land. particular.
