On Reason and Other Forms of Knowledge Production

The following was sent to a class because I may have inadvertently insulted students with my delivery (Thanks, Deanna). I believe the context will become clear as you read:

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Hello students,
I'm afraid that, despite my best intentions, I might have been unclear in our conversation yesterday regarding reason and faith. I said that any belief in a supernatural creative act for humanity (those described in our reading for yesterday) was an unreasonable belief. I think that might have sounded like I was insulting those of you who believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago and that some divine figure molded humans out of clay and breathed life into them. However, my use of the word "reason" was not meant to be insulting here.

As you recall, philosophers place means of knowledge production in various categories (see ch. 3.1*). One of those categories is Reason (pg. 165) -- this category of knowledge can only be applied to known facts. In relation to the age of the world, for instance, the known facts are that (as close as we can determine), the earth is billions of years old. Humans have been walking the planet for millions of years. Homo Sapiens have been here for tens of thousands. Art, textiles, and communities have been found which existed more than 6,000 years ago. All of these are "known facts," and thereby present a "reasonable" approach to understanding the creation of human life on the planet.

However, chapter 3 points out that reason is only one mode of knowing. Those who doubt the reasonable approach are using other types of knowing (and philosophically, all types are valid). For instance, [one student] mentioned a belief in the King James Version of the Bible as a literal description of the creation of humans. That means that she is using "Knowledge from Others" (pg. 164) rather than reason as the basis for her beliefs. And although she wasn't present for yesterday's discussion, [another student] has previous spoken about the power of "Intuition" (pg. 166) which means believing in something because it feels right deep inside you.

In our society we ignore the simple truth that these different approaches to knowledge are often incompatible. We, as individuals, must privilege certain forms of knowledge at the expense of others. At different times, we are likely to privilege what we've heard from others more than what we've seen as factual evidence. And, almost all the time, we are likely to privilege our own depths more than any other type of knowledge. The key is that to say something like Creationism is "unreasonable" in a philosophical discussion is not to say it is "stupid" (although the two words are often interchangeable in the "real" world). To say something lacks "reason" philosophically merely means that it can only be supported by other kinds of knowledge (like a biblical-type text or personal intuition).

On that note, I am actually sorry if my delivery seemed insulting. I was genuinely interested in talking more about the way we as humans mythologize our creation (and often deify it). I wonder if reason doesn't harm the mind when it seeks to remove the power of mythology from the human psyche (see Joseph Campbell, pg. 580).

*all page numbers are from James Christian's Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, 10th edition -- a book I highly recommend for everyone's enjoyment.