27 Rationalism

Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle, though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development.

The Cartesian Method is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge.

The Circle of Reason (TCOR) is a Twin Cities, Minnesota-based international society of theists, atheists, conservatives, and liberals who espouse the social philosophy of pluralistic rationalism.

Dehellenization refers to a disillusionment with forms of Greek philosophy that emerged in the Hellenistic Period, and in particular to a rejection of the use of reason. The term was first used in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI in a speech "Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections," to refer to attempts to separate Christianity from Greek philosophical thought. Subsequently, the term figured prominently in Robert R. Reilly's book The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, to refer to what Reilly characterized as "the religion of Islam's divorce from reason and rationality." The extent and significance of dehellenization in both the Christian and Islamic religious traditions continues to be widely disputed.

Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853–1925), born Alice Chenoweth, was an American author, rationalist public intellectual, political activist, and government functionary. Gardener produced many lectures, articles, and books during the 1880s and 1890s and is remembered today for her role in the freethought and women's suffrage movements and for her place as a pioneering woman in the top echelon of the American civil service.

German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The best-known thinkers in the movement, besides Kant, were Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the proponents of Jena Romanticism. August Ludwig Hülsen, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Salomon Maimon and Friedrich Schleiermacher also made major contributions.

Ideas are abstract concepts, in common usage and according to philosophy. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. The capacity to create and understand the meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of human beings. In a popular sense, an idea arises in a reflexive, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection, for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place. A new or an original idea can often lead to innovation.

Innatism is a philosophical and epistemological doctrine that holds that the mind is born with ideas/knowledge, and that therefore the mind is not a "blank slate" at birth. This is in contrast to, and was contested by, early empiricists such as John Locke. Innatism asserts that not all knowledge is gained from experience and the senses. Plato and Descartes were prominent philosophers in the development of innatism and the notion that the mind is already born with ideas, knowledge and beliefs. Both philosophers emphasize that experiences are the key to unlocking this knowledge but not the source of the knowledge itself. Essentially, on this doctrine, no knowledge is derived exclusively from one's experiences.

In the study of the human mind, intellect refers to and identifies the ability of the mind to reach correct conclusions about what is true and what is false, and about how to solve problems. The term intellect derives from the Ancient Greek philosophy term nous, which translates to the Latin intellectus and into the French and English languages as intelligence. Discussion of the intellect is in two areas of knowledge, wherein the terms intellect and intelligence are related terms.In philosophy, especially in classical and medieval philosophy the intellect (nous) is an important subject connected to the question: How do humans know things? Especially during late antiquity and the Middle Ages, the intellect was proposed as a concept that could reconcile philosophical and scientific understandings of Nature, with monotheistic religious understandings, by making the intellect a link between each human soul, and the divine intellect of the cosmos. During the Latin Middle Ages the distinction developed whereby the term intelligence referred to the incorporeal beings that governed the celestial sphere; see: passive intellect and active intellect. In modern psychology and in neuroscience, the terms intelligence and intellect describe mental abilities that allow people to understand; the distinction is that intellect relates to facts, whereas intelligence relates to feelings.

Intellectualism is the mental perspective that emphasizes the use, the development, and the exercise of the intellect; and also identifies the life of the mind of the intellectual person. In the field of philosophy, “intellectualism” is synonymous with rationalism, knowledge derived from reason. Sociologically, the term intellectualism can also have a socially negative connotation about a man or woman intellectual who gives “too much attention to thinking” and who shows an “absence of affection and feeling”.

Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that: "It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will." The theory was developed as a result of Enlightenment rationalism, stating that an action can only be right if its maxim—the principle behind it—is duty to the moral law, and arises from a sense of duty in the actor.

Two kinds of logical reasoning are often distinguished in addition to formal deduction: induction and abduction. Given a precondition or premise, a conclusion or logical consequence and a rule or material conditional that implies the conclusion given the precondition, one can explain the following.Deductive reasoning determines whether the truth of a conclusion can be determined for that rule, based solely on the truth of the premises. Example: "When it rains, things outside get wet. The grass is outside, therefore: when it rains, the grass gets wet." Mathematical logic and philosophical logic are commonly associated with this type of reasoning. Inductive reasoning attempts to support a determination of the rule. It hypothesizes a rule after numerous examples are taken to be a conclusion that follows from a precondition in terms of such a rule. Example: "The grass got wet numerous times when it rained, therefore: the grass always gets wet when it rains." This type of reasoning is commonly associated with generalization from empirical evidence. While they may be persuasive, these arguments are not deductively valid: see the problem of induction. Abductive reasoning, sometimes called inference to the best explanation, selects a cogent set of preconditions. Given a true conclusion and a rule, it attempts to select some possible premises that, if true also, can support the conclusion, though not uniquely. Example: "When it rains, the grass gets wet. The grass is wet. Therefore, it might have rained." This kind of reasoning can be used to develop a hypothesis, which in turn can be tested by additional reasoning or data. Diagnosticians, detectives, and scientists often use this type of reasoning.

Shaj Mohan is a philosopher based in India. His philosophical works are in the areas of metaphysics, reason, philosophy of technology, philosophy of politics, and secrecy. Mohan's works are based on the principle of anastasis according to which philosophy is an ever-present possibility on the basis of a reinterpretation of reason.

Moral intellectualism or ethical intellectualism is a view in meta-ethics according to which genuine moral knowledge must take the form of arriving at discursive moral judgements about what one should do. One way of understanding this is doing what's right is a reflection of what any being know's right. However, it can also be interpreted as the understanding that a rationally consistent worldview and theoretical way of life, as exemplified by Socrates, is superior to the life devoted to a moral life.

The Palazzo Postale is an official Italian government building in Palermo, Sicily, Italy executed in the stripped classicism architectural style. it is located on the centrally located Palermo boulevard Via Roma.

Baruch Spinoza's philosophy encompasses nearly every area of philosophical discourse, including metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. It earned Spinoza an enduring reputation as one of the most important and original thinkers of the seventeenth century.

The Pournelle chart, developed by Jerry Pournelle in his 1963 political science Ph.D. dissertation, is a two-dimensional coordinate system which can be used to distinguish political ideologies. It is similar to the political compass and the Nolan Chart in that it is a two-dimensional chart, but the axes of the Pournelle chart are different from those of other systems. The two axes are as follows:The x-axis, "Attitude toward the State", refers to a political philosophy's attitude toward the state and centralized government. The farthest right is "state worship" and the farthest left represents the state as the "ultimate evil", preferring individual freedom. The y-axis, "Attitude toward planned social progress", refers to the extent which a political philosophy is compatible with the idea that social problems can be solved by the use of reason. The top indicates complete confidence in planned social progress and the bottom represents skepticism of such methods, often considering them as naively utopian. Those at the top of the axis would tend to discard a traditional custom if they do not understand what purpose it serves, while those at the bottom would tend to keep the custom.

Analytical psychology is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" of the psyche. It was designed to distinguish it from Freud's psychoanalytic theories as their seven-year collaboration on psychoanalysis was drawing to an end between 1912 and 1913. The evolution of his science is contained in his monumental opus, the Collected Works, written over sixty years of his lifetime.

The Rationalist Association, originally the Rationalist Press Association, is an organization in the United Kingdom, founded in 1885 by a group of freethinkers who were unhappy with the increasingly political and decreasingly intellectual tenor of the British secularist movement. The purpose of the Rationalist Press Association was to publish literature that was too anti-religious to be handled by mainstream publishers and booksellers. The Rationalist Press Association changed its name to "The Rationalist Association" in 2002.

The Rationalists is a 1988 book by the philosopher John Cottingham, in which the author offers an overview of the most important exponents of rationalism, namely René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Other thinkers, such as Nicolas Malebranche, are also dealt with.

Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. Reason is sometimes referred to as rationality.

The Sea of Faith Network (SoF) is an organisation with the stated aim to explore and promote religious faith as a human creation.

Secular Review (1876–1907) was a freethought/secularist weekly publication in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain that appeared under a variety of names. It represented a "relatively moderate style of Secularism," more open to old Owenite and new socialist influences in contrast to the individualism and social conservatism of Charles Bradlaugh and his National Reformer. It was edited during the period 1882–1906 by William Stewart Ross (1844–1906), who signed himself "Saladin."

Secular Thought (1887–1911) was a Canadian periodical, published in Toronto, dedicated to promoting the principles of freethought and secularism. Founded and edited during its first several years by English freethinker Charles Watts, the editorship was assumed by Toronto printer and publisher James Spencer Ellis in 1891 when Watts returned to England. During that period, Secular Thought was the principal organ of the freethought movement in Canada, publishing large amounts of material from England and the United States in addition to commenting on Canadian affairs.

In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, and deliberation. But other mental processes, like considering an idea, memory, or imagination, are also often included. These processes can happen internally independent of the sensory organs, unlike perception. But when understood in the widest sense, any mental event may be understood as a form of thinking, including perception and unconscious mental processes. In a slightly different sense, the term thought refers not to the mental processes themselves but to mental states or systems of ideas brought about by these processes.

The wax argument or the ball of wax example is a thought experiment that René Descartes created in the second of his Meditations on First Philosophy. He devised it to analyze what properties are essential for bodies, show how uncertain our knowledge of the world is compared to our knowledge of our minds, and argue for rationalism.

The questions pertaining to "why there is anything at all", or, "why there is something rather than nothing" have been raised or commented on by philosophers including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger – who called it "the fundamental question of metaphysics".