One possible way out of the dilemma: our experiences give us access to reason in a similar way to how a ladder can lead us to a place that is more secure than the ladder itself. Once our experiences grant us access to reason, reason can take us beyond and above our experiences.
I understand what you are saying but I think that that is not a right way to get ride of the dilemma. Think off the following questions: How could we be sure that the experience doesn’t mislead us to construct wrong premises in our reasoning? What if the ladder is up side down? How could we be sure?
That is not correct (the bold part) to my opinion since we construct premises only through our experiences.
I’m not sure I see the dilemma. Let’s take the example of a baby in a high chair. He accidentally drops his toy and his mother picks it up for him. His toy falls again and again his mother picks it up. He notices that when something falls she’ll get it for him, so he tries dropping it on purpose. She picks it up and he’s learned a new game. So he started with the experience of a dropped toy, he make his observation and comes up with a theory. He then tests his theory and draws a conclusion. The ability to reason was there before the experience, but it needed the experience to be useful.
Where does the ability to notice come from (the bold part)? From experience. How can s/he (the kid) know that its experience is right or wrong? Through reason. This is circular: You need reason to judge an experience (your example, bold part) and you need experience to reason. I know it is a hard to grasp it.
I think it’s more about trusting your senses. In the example, the kid first senses the toy hitting the floor. Then the kid senses the mother picking up the toy. Now stop. You asked how can the kid know this experience was true. Well, reason can’t prove it. It’s about trusting your senses. The mind first collects information from the senses, then it passes a judgement based on that info
In all aspects of nature we find the same fundamental phenomenon arising: the progression from simple to complex.
No skin off my back. Just my philosophical opinion.Experience sometimes can mislead us. In my opinion, sometimes it cannot. For example, I think our senses are unable to mislead us into thinking we are experiencing something when we actually are not. If they tell us we are experiencing something, that itself is an experience. Experience cannot be non-experience. Our senses sometimes mislead us into thinking we are seeing a real apple when it is really a wax one, but they are correct that we are experiencing something.
About some things, we can be sure the ladder is not upside down. About other things, I do not think we can. St. Augustine wrote a book against academic skepticism in which he tells us six items about which we can have absolute certainty: disjunctives, mathematics, logical facts, appearances, the fact of your own existence, and recursive knowledge. This semester, I did my final project for epistemology on this issue, and made a video discussing St. Augustine’s epistemology. The whole video is kind of long, but if you’re interested in this section, the section on these six items where we can have certainty is here.
I don’t. I’m not sure it has to, in a certain sense. Perhaps our experiences only unlock a latent ability to reason, but do not create it. Also, to my knowledge there is no Catholic doctrine that says we need to have experiences before we can reason about stuff. That is only an opinion. It seems like a pretty good one to me, and I think St. Thomas Aquinas held to this opinion, but it is still only an opinion.
Where the trust in senses come from?
How we can judge before we have the capacity to reason?
I can enclose a simple argument as this: You need reason to judge an experience and you need experience to reason. This is circular.In all aspects of nature we find the same fundamental phenomenon arising: the progression from simple to complex.
The simplest creatures on earth made way for the most complex, and without the simplest the complex would not exist.
So it is with reason at the start of life and reason closer to the end. Without simple reason based on experience we would not be capable of complex reason based on more complex experience.
No dilemma so far as I can see.
I agree.
I disagree with a couple of items that you have listed. For example I have a thread on what you call “the fact of your own existence” and show that we cannot be sure about existence of experiencer, what I call “I”. You can find it here.
Well, think of a kid who is in state of coma for all his life and suddenly weaks up. How s/he could have ability to reason?
I don’t think that we have anything like a latent ability to reason. We don’t need to practice reasoning if we have such a ability.
That is a shortcut and I don’t agree with it (bold part). Why we then need to practice reasoning in order to improve our ability to reason if we already have the ability to reason? Reasoning is a part of knowledge which expands as well. Reasoning is not a fixed package that allows us to only expand our knowledge.
It is obvious that we develop reasoning by age. It is not a fix package granted.The Catholic understanding is that humans have a rational soul. That’s where we get our ability to reason from. We practice so we don’t commit fallacies.
What is granted to a infant is instinct and not reasoning.
Have you ever seen a kid who is able to reason when s/he is able to talk? An infant does not need reasoning since the parents fully take care of him/her.