Anderson on Reason and Faith.

I happened across Owen Anderson's blog, Renewal Philosophy. In a recent post, he speaks briefly of the relationship between faith and reason. At the start, in speaking about the question of interest (what is reason?) he writes,

I am asking for a definition of “reason” in itself, not reason as defined by how it is used by some humans. Just like we might define “good,” or “real,” in themselves rather than giving examples of good or real things.

As is, this is sloppy. This is running two things together--although they are certainly related in important ways. On the one hand, he seems to be asking about what reason is in itself (a metaphysical question about the very nature of reason), but on the other, he speaks of definitions which is a property of words/expressions. A chair (the concrete object) doesn't have a definition, but 'chair' (the word) may have a definition. To conflate the linguistic with the metaphysical is to make a category mistake. So what he should really be saying is either

(i) I am asking for a definition of 'reason' (the single quotes indicate we're talking about the word/expression as opposed to using it).  

or 

(ii) I am asking for a theory of reason (note we're not talking about words or concepts here, we're talking about something presumably non-linguistic and its very nature). 

This isn't just me being pedantic, either. There's a deep methodological issue at stake and one that Gangadeanians commonly gloss over. I've been in many a conversations with them where I question how they know that their definitions are the correct ones. To that, the response is sometimes basically, "I don't care what the word means, I'm interesting in the nature of things not words." The problem here is that we just can't do philosophy without getting into the meaning of expressions. This is because arguments are expressed via words/expressions. First-order propositional logic (the one that gives us rules like modus ponens and modus tollens) is also known as "sentential logic" (i.e., the logic of sentences). We draw inferences from words that express propositions. So suppose Anderson wants to talk about the nature of reason (so as to adopt (ii) above), the question is whether he can shun (i). And that just seems silly. He's using the word 'reason' in order to talk about reason in itself and he wants you to come along for the ride which requires that you understand the word he is using and the manner in which he is using it (remember their mantra "meaning is more basic than truth"? Gangadean claims that you can't know whether a statement is true, without first knowing what it means!). This is abstract meta-philosophical stuff (philosophy about philosophy). And I've never been able to get any Gangadeanians to appreciate the issues, here--though academic philosophers deal in this stuff quite regularly. But the payoff is this: insofar as we express ideas/concepts via a language (as opposed to say, telepathically) in order to do philosophy, or analysis (it's called "conceptual" analysis, for a reason), we are going to have to get into definitions.

So let's assume that before we can talk about the very nature of reason, we need to figure out what the word 'reason' even means. Anderson says he wants a definition, but doesn't care about how "some" people define it. This raises an important methodological point--just whose definition should we go with? I've written on this a lot so I won't rehearse those considerations here. The slight of hand on the part of Anderson and Gangadean here is that they are being linguistic chauvinists. Without ever being explicit, and without argument, they simply assume their definition of a word like 'reason' in order to provide an analysis of reason. They never tell you this of course, and sometimes I think they just haven't been reflective enough to realize that this is just what they are doing. But basically this is what they are asking you to do when they give their spiel: "look we're just going to ignore what *some people define as 'reason', but here's our definition---and you should just take it on blind faith." Again I've hammered this point more than once before as it concerns the meaning of other important key terms like 'knowledge,' 'eternal,' 'infinite,' 'good,' evil,' 'God,' 'matter,' 'spirit,' and the like.  As I noted the importance of the meaning of words is that we evaluate many deductive inferences and ultimately arguments (as either valid or not) based on what the words mean (arguments are presented via sentences which are comprised of words/expressions). So there's a lot at stake. 

My point is that we shouldn't just take it on faith because really what they are claiming (tacitly) is that the definitions which they attach to these words are the correct ones---it's what the words mean in  English. But they do this without any arguments. But as I've mentioned before, if you want to argue that a word means X, then you had better do some empirical work to see how people use the words in the language in question. That's why Anderson's line here is so suspect. 

My point then is is that the above quote about dismissing how "some people use the word reason" should equally apply to the way that Anderson and Gangadean use the word. In other words, this is just another instance of where Anderson proposes a standard which he applies to others, but fails to apply to his own theory---it's intellectual hypocrisy.