TWO INTERPRETATIONS OF REASON

AcademicRoom (as opposed to Academia.edu) is not functioning today. So, to vent my frustration I am posting my recent paper here instead.

TWO INTERPRETATIONS OF REASON

I will begin with a description of what I mean by the development of reason. In this process, I will develop four categories, and relate how the descriptions imply two interpretations: one forwards, and another backwards. I will then explain the apparent paradox involved in this reason, and finally suggest a general method used in arriving at this useful double-comparison.

(1) Deux Interpretationes

What we know as reason is potentially just one stage of reason. I arrived at this idea by considering the question of: ‘What measures reason?’ And I thought, from a coherent perspective, the only thing that could measure reason was something outside of reason. And there could be nothing outside of reason except madness. But this raised a further question of ‘What is outside of madness?’And I thought this too could be solvable. The most obvious answer I could find was ‘Sanity’. Thus far three categories. Now, to round it out I attempted to add a fourth, responding to madness just as sanity responded to reason. And my answer for the fourth category was ‘Creativity’.

In this way, creativity became the ultimate bound of madness, just as sanity became the ultimate bound of reason.

The Four Categories are:

(1) Reason
(2) Madness
(3) Sanity
(4) Creativity

Now, developmentally, there are two interpretations (‘Deux Interpretationes’). One is that reason progresses into creativity. The other is the reverse: that creativity develops into reason. The distinction is important, because the difference developmentally seems to imply a priority for one or the other concept, or a reliance on either sanity or madness as a secondary runner-up concept.

So, now we have a second interpretation:

(1) Creativity
(2) Sanity
(3) Madness
(4) Reason

The second interpretation seems to put the emphasis on reason, but begins with creativity. The first interpretation puts the emphasis on creativity, but begins with reason.


(2) Paradox

Now, it may be further noted that reason appears to express the ‘ultimate’ embodiment of this set of data. In other words, all of the types are in some sense attempts at reason. Or, at least, reason is the simplest definition to use in place of any of the four, interpreted as I have interpreted them as translations of reason originally. However, in a similar way, creativity may be called an ‘empirical’ embodiment of the set of data.

Therefore, there is a conflict between the ultimate and the empirical, which amounts to a paradox. For, although the two concepts appear similar, the context places them separately as opposite alternatives. The choice appears to be between the two, even though they are the same.

If we are to prefer the empirical, we are left with creativity and abstract reason. If we choose the ultimate, we are left with nominalism, and end up groping for creativity to solve its significance.


(3) A General Method Derived from the Investigation

What may be called the ING Method may be derived most simply from the consideration of a set which reverses order, in which a double-horned dilemma emerges. The solution is always a choice between ultimates, and the ultimates are further made ambiguous by the ambiguous size of the set. Thus, there is a kind of criss-crossing between degrees of each extreme, and its relation to the central interpretation (a paradox).

ING may stand for ‘Inverse Negative Grouping’.