REASON

REASON

Meaning

Reason or reasoning is regarded as a more serious or complex process that needs a well organized brain.

The French word 'raison' is derived directly from latin word and this is the direct sources of the English word 'reason'.Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things,applying logic,establishing and verifying facts, changing and justifying practices and beliefs based on new or existing information. It is associated with the human activities and it is the reasoning activity that is the basis of Philosophy, Science, language, mathematics and art. It can also  be referred to as rationality.

It not only control the cognitive activities,but also the total behavior and personality is affected by the proper or improper development of one's reasoning ability. It is essentially a cognitive ability and resembles thinking.

Nature of Reason

•  It has a definite goal
• It is an implicit act and involves problem-solving behaviour
• It makes use of one's previous knowledge and experiences
• It is highly a symbolic function

Definition

"Reasoning is step-wise thinking with apurpose or goal in mind"- Garett

"Reasoning is the term applied to a highly purposeful controlled selective thinking"-Gates

"In reasoning facts or principles furnished by recall,present observation or both, are combined and examined to see what conclusion can be drawn from the combination"-Woodworth

Reasoning in this way may be termed as a highly specialized thinking which help an individual to explore mentally the cause and effect relationship of an event or solution of a problem by adopting some well organized systematic steps based on previous experiences combined with the present observation.

Types of Reasoning

a)Inductive Reasoning

Induction is a way of proving a statement or generalizing a rule or principle.Its starting from particular facts or instances one can formulate generalized principles and conclusions. Inductive reasoning is from particular to general.

For example,Iron expands when heated,water also expands when heated, air also expands when heated. Therefore all types of matter, that is solid,liquid and gas expand when heated.So, Inductive reasoning is from particular to general.

b)Deductive Reasoning

Its just opposite to inductive reasoning.Here  start completely agreeing with some already discovered or pre-established generalized fact or principle and tries to apply it to particular cases.
For exam,Matters expands when heated. Iron is a form of matter,so it expands when heated. Hence deductive reasoning is from general to particular.
For example, We observed a large number of white swans on all continents and hypothesize that we need to protect by law all swans that are white but also black and red.Thus we conclude that this type of reasoning cannot yield an absolutely certain conclusion, similar to inductive reasoning,but it can actually increase human knowledge.

c)Inductive-creative Reasoning 

It includes inductive area of reasoning and the creativity element in it.

For example, a person observed a large number of white swans on all continents and hypothesize that we need to protect by law all swans that are white but also black and red. Thus we conclude that this type of reasoning cannot yield an absolutely certain conclusion,similar to inductive reasoning,but it can actually increase human knowledge. 

d)Abductive Reasoning

In this reasoning we favor one conclusion above others,by attempting to falsily alternative explanations.

Example
A doctor can find some symptoms in a particular may be many causes for them, and the doctor favours one cause for it.

e)Analogical Reasoning

 It is viewed as a form of inductive reasoning from a single example.so that the conclusive may be wrong.Inductive reasoning uses large number of examples for its conclusion from the particular to the general.
For example, In two statements ,First one Socrates is human and male,another one Beyonce is human .Then conclude Beyonce is male. The conclusion is wrong.

d)Fallacious Reasoning

 Flawed reasoning in arguments is known as fallacious reasoning. Bad reasoning within arguments can be because it commits either a formal fallacy or an informal fallacy.
Formal fallacy occur where there is a problem with the form or structure of the argument .An informal fallacy is an error in reasoning that occurs due to a problem with the content.