h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Second philosophy question.

I am wondering whether 'reason' can in principle explain everything. Or are there some things that exist that can never be understood in a purely intellectual way?

It doesn't seem unreasonable that there should be some things that cannot be understood intellectually - we seem to be pretty good at explaining things, but there doesn't seem to be a reason why we should be able to understand everything. In fact its a bit of a mystery why we do seem to be able to understand so much (do we?) about physics, the world around us, life, the universe and everything.

Then again, I can't think of anything that is rock-solid-not-intellectually-understandable. That's one of the problems - how are we supposed to show that something really is out of the reach of our reasoning abilities using those same abilities? There are some non-computability type results from mathematics that might be relevant here...if we can show that we are really doing nothing more than a sufficiently large computer could do (ie nothing non-computable) then there are definitely (and I *think* provably) things that we will never understand.

Hmm, there is a result that mathematical truth can never be finitely described, so in the sense that we can only write down a finite amount of knowledge in finite time, there will always be mathematical truths out there that we have no proof of, not even a theory that predicts them. So if you only allow a finite amount of time, then no, we cannot explain everything, even in principle.

Maybe you were thinking of things like 'love', 'God' etc. Oh well,

A lot of people would claim we can never comprehend God. But that is just some theological trickery, not very useful in any way.

But in mathematics it should have been shown that we should for example not be able to solve the three-body problem. That we won't be able to properly describe the movements of three objects and how they interact due to gravity.

But what do you mean by reason? Because pure reason wouldn't get you far, that is why science has experiments. Because if our common sense was correct we wouldn't need science, since we would already know everything.

Oh, and wether the world is an illusion or not will probably also be hard.

What was the first question?

Historically that oppinion is not uncommon you only have to look to your Rene Decartes and Immanuel Kant's of this world to see examples where people have tried to understand the world through reason alone.
The question stated however does revolve around understanding and what you mean by 'reason', otherwise it doesn't make sense.
Aristotle for instance, posited reason and the ability to reason as a distinctive function of human-kind because it forms part of his conception of the soul (before medicine really got going on working out what all of our bits actually do - the soul was believed to be what gave us life and animation etc) which corisponds to what we today would probably call the mind - although the concepts differ in their meaning and application.

I suppose here it would be prudent to ask if you have an interest in philosophy - whether you do or you don't - the area of philosophy that your question broadly fits into is called "Metaphysics" (which literally means 'beyond' or 'after' physics - but don't let that fool you, it's a hang up again from Aristotle who used to teah his students at the Academy and ordered his lecture notes (which are the texts that we now possess - they didn't write books then, which accounts for some of the problems of style that we encounter there) metaphysics literally 'came after' physics! Still the sorts of question that are to be found in metaphysical enquiry are about 'everything' in the way the the other two 'types' of philosophy are not: Ethics (value) & Epistemology (and Knowledge).
metaphysics generally asks question about the world and why things are - and here it differs from something like science as previously mentioned in that it doesn't rely on experiments or observations. Now, another important aside, whether or not that impoverishes the subject is a hot topic for debate - but remember before science was called science it was known as 'natural philosophy'. Philosophy is done by asking questions, arguing, and thinking about how our concepts really work. So in that sense at least - reason is being applied in a bid to understand everything.

Are there any things that are outside of this endeavour - what about love?
Love has been analysed by philosophers for generations - not least of all Plato (vis Socrates) gave an account in "The Symposium" (which translates as: "the banquet" - sort of a toga and tapas dinner party!) Shopenhaur wrote about love but he saw love as something that was to do with the species will to live - and nothing over and above that.
Whether or not you agree with that claim or can reason arguments against it - is another way in which philosophy is conducted.

''Everything' could of course mean Space and the Universe - and I suppose it has to be concede that science has got the edge on us philosophers here. However, and I'll be crucified for this next bit - I'm sure but here goes...it's important not to confuse 'science' with the sum total of human knowledge.
What I mean by that is the phrase 'science' is often handily banded about to mean just - science has discovered X and science has proven Y. I'm not going to dispute any fundemental rules of chemistry or deny the theory of evolution - and pick up on something Xanatic said that "we wouldn't need science if common sense were perfect." This is in danger of making the sort of assumption I'm talking about (and I'm not having a dig Xanatic - just making a point.) that "Our Science" has revealed the world to us - and that for the large part may indeed by true - but to just say that science is based and receives it's name from the scientific method and that method can always be critiqued.
I'll say no more because I'm in danger of wandering hideously off-topic

or maybe I haven't..and I hope I haven't made things worse by confusing you further

I just want to say to Xanaticagain before I stop, I finished a fascinating course last semester all about modern theology that made a lot of the idea that comprehension of God is impossible - I'm not a theologian but I'd love to hear your views on this, I was thinking of cobbling together an entry on this as well maybe. Maybe we shoudl start a thread about it somewhere.

Just a thought.

Clive

In a way, I don't think I understand the question! I'm not normally thick!

Hmm, I wouldn't pull Descartes into this thing. What he meant was more comprehending with your senses as opposed to pure reason. I can imagine that you could find out what the whole universe was like, if you could reason from some true things. But a lof of the things we believe are wrong, and that will affect our futher logical conclusions. Which is why our reason needs to be recalibrated every once in a while using experiments and such.

However, it seems to me as we learn more about Nature and the natural laws, we can't understand things anymore in a conventional sense. It becomes more about accepting.

Hmm...okay you may have a point about Descartes but I thought he was all up for discounting the senses as the source of knowledge as they are inherently untrustworty - as 'proven' by his method of doubt.

I merely mentioned his name as a example of someone applying their intellect alone to a problem and working it through to a conclusion in that sense was he applying reason to everything.

It depends on what you mean (as always with any philosophy question) by the word "explain". Xanatic gave the example of the three-body problem. However, there is, in some sense, an explanation for the behaviour of the three-body problem insofar as an explanation is possible. Results from chaos theory prove that predicting the behaviour of a three body gravitational system accurately over long periods of time is impossible because small variations lead to enormous effects and you can't account for all the small variations.

So, if by explain in this context you meant "be able to predict the behaviour of a three body gravitational system from initial conditions for all time" then the answer is no. But, if quantum theory is correct, then the inherent randomness in the universe means that there IS no prediction of the future possible. There are some things you can say about the three body problem though, and perhaps it can be explained as far as is meaningful...?

So, perhaps the questions which have answers can be answered by us, and that's the best we can do. But then again maybe not. Tum ti tum.

Is 'reason' powerful enough to understand anything? Didn't Tolstoy say "The one piece of absolute knowlege that man can attain is that life is meaningless". Didn't Kafka say "The meaning of life is that it ends". Didn't Manuel from Faulty Towers say "I know nothing".

What I meant is that a guy doing maths seems to have shown that the three-body problem is not only practically impossible, but also theoretically impossible. And not because of quantum mechanics.

As for Descartes, the guy did believe the only valid thing was reason. I think he was wrong. If everything around you is an illusion, how do you know reason is valid? The reason we think reason(sounds stupid) is good for something, is because it has helped us in the real world. But if that is an illusion we have no reason to think reason(agh) is any good. In this world we cannot even be sure that because we think we are. Considering how frightened Descartes got by his ideas, good thing he didn't realize the full implications of it.

Descartes thought reason was guaranteed by God.

so whos up for debating *THAT* one???

If I were God I'd try to get rid of reason or he'd just disappear in that puff of logic.

that sounds awfully familiar...

Do we use reason to try and understand everything simply because it is the only way we can understand anything?
Even believing in some kind of Spiritual higher being, is still reason i.e. I believe that God created man and the Earth because I cannot see another way it could have been done.
Therefore I reason that God created Man and the Earth.

What a load of absolute b******s. Hey ho.

It is my experience that any discussion that aims to touch on philosophy will require a preliminary round of debating to sort out just the terms that are to be used in consulting just one question that it is doomed to endless introspection and argument and that's before the debate proper gets going. For instance here were taling about reason and already we've used exaples of from science, matematics, even working in some references to God - which as GWL post indicates is a contentious issue as any.

Xanatic, I think what has been proved is that there is no way of accurately computing the behaviour of a three body system over long periods of time because of the instability (small errors magnify over time). The equation that they satisfy is well known, but it is a differential equation (well, it's a system of differential equations). My point about quantum mechanics was that randomness is inherent in the universe, so even if the differential equations that govern a three body system are correct and in theory accurately model the system, then it would be impossible to predict the future state of the system because the small random effects would multiply. In other words, uncertainty about the future is inherent in the universe.

Maybe. It's just another possibility to think about...

For that matter, do we need to be able to predict the behaviour of quantities that satisfy differential equations to "understand" them?

I just thought of something. I don't see how you with just reason, can find out if the light in the fridge really goes out when you close the door. You need science for that.

Either that or a dwarf who isn't claustrophobic

Well, with science I did include brave dwarfs. What I meant was you will have to somehow investigate it. You can't just sit on the couch and wonder expecting to find the answer.