Hannah Rosenblum
Dr. Renfroe 1B
9/27/17
Reason Essay TOK
Prompt: How can beliefs affect our capacity to reason well and to recognize valid arguments? Can they affect a person’s capacity to distinguish between fallacy, good argument and rationalization? What is the difference between a rational argument and a rationalization?
Reason is the way in which we try to make sense of the world using logic, rationality, comparison, judgement, and experience. Reason is also our justification or explanation for an action or event. Our beliefs are statements that we accept as true or something that we accept exists. What makes an argument valid is if its conclusion follows logically from the premises. A lot of our reasoning behind our arguments are based on our beliefs, which can sometimes make our arguments invalid because there are some beliefs that are not based on anything logical. Beliefs sometimes hinder our ability to reason, because when it comes to reasoning, logic is used; however, when we speak about our beliefs, we become so rooted into our own value systems that we remain holding on to them and pay less attention to logic.
Our beliefs cloud our judgement and make our arguments biased. Many people take excessive pride in their beliefs, causing them to only pay attention to their ideas.
All beliefs, religious or moral, can impact the way one interprets ideas. One’s commitment to a belief can cause bias that hinders their ability to make a distinction between rational and irrational arguments. One may only pay attention to evidence that supports their claims or beliefs, and ignore those that don’t, called confirmation bias. People make up illogical conclusions in order to confirm their preexisting beliefs, called belief bias.
Faith and religion are two large beliefs that a majority of the world associate with. Many people commit to the religion, bringing bias into their ways of reasoning. Religion has a lot of authority over people. Many religions have sacred texts that are lists of rules that dictate how one must act and think. Since people are so committed to their religions, they do everything they can to follow these commandments, taking over their lives and reasoning. There has been an ongoing debate in the history of the world questioning the idea that there really is or was a god. Many people believe there is a god just because they do, or just because of their religion, without any evidence that a god has been or is in existence. Some people find it easier to just follow a simple belief, such as god, with confidence rather than getting confused with the details. Many people’s lives revolve around religion even with the basis of many religions being a god, that has never been proven to have existed. People reason using their religious beliefs, making their arguments invalid, preventing them from reasoning well.
My eighth-grade English teacher, was extremely religious, and his Christian beliefs were brought up during many lectures he gave, and examples he used to teach us things. Specifically, when we analyzed poetry in his class, he perceived many of the poems to be associated with Christianity. Someone who isn’t well informed or doesn’t believe in the Christian faith may not recognize or have the same associations. These beliefs he had, prevented him from reasoning well and interpreting the poems validly, in turn preventing him from coming up with a valid argument. He was unable to recognize the fact that his bias was affecting the validity of his argument.
Fallacies are invalid patterns of reasoning or a deceptive notion; a good argument is one that is valid, the conclusion following from the premises, and is supported with lots of evidence. Rationalization is the attempt to justify actions with logical reasons, even if they are not appropriate. Beliefs make it harder to differentiate between these three terms because they interfere with reasoning. Our political beliefs influence how we respond or write about other political ideas and affairs. For example, a republican with a certain view of a topic looking at a democrat’s perception of the topic, automatically may look at it falsely, adding their own political views rather than facts. These beliefs prevent us from being able to make good arguments, being able rationalize, and the failure of reasoning caused by the beliefs results in an invalid conclusion.
In my freshman journalism class, we were given an assignment during the election, to analyze all the beliefs and history of the candidates, choose who we wanted to be the next president of the United States, and then explain why we chose this person. This turned out to be a difficult task for many people because it was hard for my classmates to consider anyone who was not affiliated with the political party they previously have stood by. They seemed only capable of considering the information of candidates for their political party. They weren’t able to distinguish between fallacy, good argument, and rationalization, because their previous political beliefs interfered with the ability to justify their arguments.
A rational argument is one that follows the basic principles of logic, facts, and reason. However, rationalization is the attempt by someone to justify their actions with any argument, invalid or valid. It begins with our prejudices and then uses poor reasons to justify them. A rational argument is more concerned with reality; rationalization is more concerned with what one wants to be true.
Some people may say that beliefs don’t affect our capacity to reason well and recognize valid arguments because we can support these beliefs with logical evidence. This logical evidence can support our claims, creating a good argument. For example, political beliefs can be backed up with statistics, and religion can be backed up with the idea that there is no evidence proving or disproving if god is in existence, or never existed at all.
Beliefs affect our capacity to reason well and to recognize valid arguments because beliefs explanations are subjective to a specific person and is biased, preventing any logically reasoning to be made with it. Beliefs hinder our ability to reason because logic is required for reason; but, when we discuss our beliefs we stray away from logic focusing on our personal value systems. Now that the use of beliefs has interfered with reasoning, a valid argument, following logically from the premises, is hard to achieve.