“When one contemplates the conquest of nature by technology one must remember that that conquest had to include our own bodies.”—George Grant, “In Defence of North America” (1969)

One of the most common words used today by students in TOK classes is “mindset”, but when asked what exactly this word means the users of the word are at a loss to explain it. “Mindset” is one of the words that we use without thinking, or hearing. This writing will attempt to explore the relationship of reason to what we understand as our knowledge (which the historicists preclude is the product of a ‘mindset’) and how reason is, actually, the ground of the ‘mindsets’ that we think we have chosen in our “freedom”, or what we call our “empowerment”. When we speak of ‘mindsets’, we are speaking of human cognition, how we think, perceive and understand the world around us, the language and the concepts that we use, and how the manner (methodology) of this thinking, perceiving and understanding has come about (historical background). We shall understand “cognition” as an (intellectual) processing of (intellectual) contents, the contents which are what we have come to understand as “data”. As we shall see, we have a relation to the self only insofar as we have a relation to others.

What we call reason as a way of knowing is grounded in the principle of reason: nihil est sine ratione, “nothing is without reason” or “nothing is without a reason”. The principle of reason holds that each and every thing that is, no matter how it is, has a reason. Whatever happens to be actual has a reason for its actuality. Whatever happens to be possible has a reason for its possibility. Whatever happens to be necessary has a reason for its necessity. 

We require reasons for the assertions that we make in knowledge claims. We insist upon a foundation for every attitude when we explore our emotions and how these emotions shape and determine, attune, our human cognition, our processing of contents. It is from within this principle of reason that we determine who among us is sane and who among us is not. In our search for reasons we begin with the immediate reasons for the things in front of us and then proceed to attempt to get to the bottom of, or ground of, the more remote reasons and, finally, ask about the ultimate reason.

The principle of reason is ubiquitous in all that we do, and it is so because it is “illuminating”. Nothing happens without a reason: nothing happens without a cause. Every cause is in some way a reason. Not every reason brings about something in the way of causation, however. For example, the universally valid statement “All men are mortal” contains the reason for seeing that Socrates is mortal, but the statement does not bring about, is not the cause for, the fact that Socrates dies. As we shall see, the principle of reason is not the same as the principle of causality; it is broader and encompasses the principle of causality.

The principle of reason requires that reasons must be rendered for all that is. The rendering of reasons is carried out through logos or language as a way of knowing. Logos is any type of rendering; it is not merely that which can be expressed in words. In fact, the dominant logos of our age is mathematics and in the sciences, the providing of sufficient reasons for propositions must occur mathematically.

We need to explain three questions that arise from this: 1. how come a reason is always a rendered reason? 2. How come a reason must be rendered in the first place, that is, explicitly brought forward? 3. to whom or to what is a reason rendered?

The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz was the first to formulate the principle of reason as a statement and as a principle in the 17^th century. He insisted that it was the principle. What does it mean? Why did it take so long in the history of ideas and philosophy for this statement to be uttered and why was it written in Latin by Leibniz?

Leibniz answers our first question with the observation that a reason is a rendered reason “because a truth is only the truth if a reason can be rendered for it.” For Leibniz, truth is always a correct judgement. Judgement is the connection of what is stated with that about which the statement is made. We call this the correspondence theory of truth. As the philosopher Kant stated: “Judgement is the seat of truth”. What the statement indicates is that which, as the unifying unity of subject and predicate, supports their being connected is the basis, the ground of judgement: it gives a justification for the connection. Reason renders an account of the truth of judgement. “Account” in Latin is called ratio. There is a connection between reason and language here. The ground of the truth of judgement is represented as ratio. The first principle for Leibniz is the fundamental principle of rendering reasons.

With regard to the second question “how come reasons must be brought forward whatever reasons”, Leibniz says that reason is ratio, that is, “an account”. If an account is not given, a judgement remains without justification. It lacks evidence of its correctness. The judgement itself is not truth. Judgement only becomes truth when the reason for the connection is specified and accounted for, when the ratio, that is, an account, is given. Such a giving of an account is in need of a site where the account can be delivered and rendered. This site may be as formal as an experiment or an essay or an exhibition, or it can be as informal as a statement made over coffee and donuts. The rendering of reasons is because reason is ratio, an account. If it is not given, the judgment remains without justification. It lacks the evidence, the support or the ground, for its correctness. It remains “subjective”.

In answer to the third question: to whom or to what must reasons be rendered, the answer is to human beings who determine objects as objects by way of a representation that judges. “Representation” is representare: to make something present to humans, to present something, to bring something to a presence, to bring it forward. The “account” is that which brings forward into presence.

Since Descartes, and followed by Leibniz and all modern thinking, humans are experienced as an “I” (an ego, a self) that relates to the world such that it renders this world to itself in the form of connections correctly established between its representations, its ideas and images—its judgements—and this “I” sets itself over and against this world as to an object. Judgements and statements are correct, that means true, only if the reason for the connection of the subject to its predicate is rendered, given back to the representing “I”. A reason is this sort of reason only if it is a ratio or an account that is given about something that is in front of a person as a judging “I”, and is given to this “I”. An account is an account only if it is handed over. This handing over of reasons can be experienced in the human cognition in the form of works of art either as performances, paintings or language, as discoveries in the sciences through experiment or observation, or the personal experiences that one grasps and possesses through one’s own cognition. A reason is a reason to be rendered. When the reason for the connection of representations has been directed back and expressly rendered to the “I”, what is represented first comes to a stand so that it is securely established as an object, that is, as an object for a representing subject.

But a rendered reason only effects such a bringing-to-a-stand of objects when it gives in a sufficient way an account that is adequate for the secure establishing of objects. The reason rendered must be a ratio sufficiens or a “sufficient reason”. This is the principle behind all assessments in the IB Diploma and in all human cognition in general. It is the ‘mindset’ that demands “results” which in themselves satisfy the principle of sufficient reason. Doing well or not doing well in your assessments is whether or not you have sufficiently rendered the reasons in securely establishing the object about which you are making assertions whether it be in mathematical equations or in writing the TOK essay.

Leibniz says: “Nothing exists for which the sufficient reason for its existence cannot be rendered.” The reason that demands its being rendered in every judgement about an object at the same time demands that, as a reason, it suffices—which means that it be completely satisfactory as an account. Of and for what? So that in every way and for everyone it can bring an object to stand in the entirety of its stance. The completeness of the reasons to be rendered—perfectio—is what guarantees that something is firmly established—secured in its place—as an object for human cognition. Only the completeness of the account, perfection, vouches for the fact that every cognition everywhere and at all times can include and count on the object and reckon with it. It is the principle of reason that gives security to the woman in Moscow, Idaho and the man in Moscow, Russia that their proceedings in their experiments or their mathematical propositions are correct. “Nothing is without reason”. The principle now says that every thing counts as existing when and only when it has been securely established as a calculable object for cognition. It is from this reckoning and calculability that we have “subjective” and “objective” statements regarding the things that are. “Subjective” statements are denigrated because they lack “reality”, they lack “objectivity”, they lack sufficient reasons in their rendering.

It is not accidental that what is called the “theory of aesthetics” and the term “aesthetics” itself as the determination of works of art appears coincidentally with the announcement of the principle of reason. “Aesthetics” and its various theories rule in the domain or AOK the Arts. Sufficient reasons must be rendered for our “experiences” of a work of art and in our determinations of what a work of art is. The work of art must be experienced as “object” otherwise our responses to it are “subjective”. The Greeks, for example, never had any theories of aesthetics. They did not view or experience their art in the manner we are asked to experience it.

This distinction between “subjective” and “objective” statements is what Leibniz determined as the “grandness” of the principle of reason. In the thinking of Leibniz, the Principle (here capitalized because it means the “first” or primary, the arche, or the axiom) decrees what may count as an object of cognition, or more generally, as a being/thing. What Leibniz is saying here is that human cognition is governed by the principle of reason and is under its power. Cognition becomes Rational and governed by Reason. For over 2000 years, ratio has meant not only an “account” in the sense of that which stands to account for something else, but also ratio means to “account for” in the sense of “vindicating”, of confirming something as being in the right, of correctly figuring something out and securing something through such reckoning or “accounting” so that it may be “counted on”. Reckoning is the way humans take up something, deal with it, and take it on; how, in general, human beings perceive something. Ratio is a manner of perceiving, which means, it is Reason. It is the determining power of our “mindset” which is sometimes called “world-view” in these writings.

Rational cognition follows the principle of reason. Reason first fully develops its essence (what it is) as Reason through the principle of reason. The principle of reason is the fundamental principle of Rational cognition in the sense of a reckoning (an accounting) that securely establishes something. One speaks of rational grounds, of evidence. Leibniz’s articulation of the principle of reason brings to fruition what we call “modernity”. The principle of reason comes to determine all cognition and behaviour, in other words, our “personal knowledge”. Since Leibniz’s articulation, the principle of reason has embedded itself in our human being and determines the manner in which we, as human beings, are moving forward into the future. But we are not fully aware of how the principle of reason operates in our day-to-day activities.

How do we hear this claim of the principle of reason in the determination of our “mindset”, how we understand our “experiences” in our day to day activities? The manner in which the claim of the principle of reason is most heard is in the distinction between “subjective” and “objective” mentioned earlier. Today, we measure what is “great” and what is “grand” only where the principle of reason is authoritative. We see the evidence of the principle of reason in our technology as it drives forward the bringing of its contrivances and products to an all-encompassing greatest possible perfection. Perfection consists in the completeness of the calculably secure establishing of objects, in the completeness of reckoning with them, and with the securing of the calculability of possibilities for reckoning. Our contrivances and products (computers and hand phones, for instance) are not merely instruments, equipment and tools like hammers and pens. The contrivances and products of technology rest on the understanding of the world about us that has become secure in its calculability. This calculability arranges the objects about us so that they are secure and at our disposal; the things are turned into “data”, “information”. It is this securing of the disposability of the objects about us which brings algebraic calculation to its height as the determination of what is considered knowledge in our age. This knowledge comes about through the applications of the methodologies in the various AOKs which follow the principle of reason.

The striving for perfection in our technology is an echo of the demand for perfectio which means here the completeness of a foundation. It asks and answers the two fundamental questions: “why” and “because”. The “how” questions are secondary responses to the fundamental questions. The principle of reason is a striving which demands the rendering of sufficient reasons for all that is. Perfection is based on the thoroughgoing calculability of objects. The calculability of objects presupposes the validity of the principle of reason. The authority of the principle of reason determines the essence of the modern, technological age and it empowers the modern age.

What role does human freedom play in this ceaseless technological striving for perfection? In our personal knowledge and how we experience our lives, we must come to terms with the distinction between calculative thinking and reflective thinking. We may begin our reflection on why this age is called the “Information Age” and “The Atomic Age” in order to illuminate the differences in the forms and ways of being-in-the-world in which human beings are captured and enslaved by the principle of reason. We shall attempt to determine the distinction between the calculative thinking which the principle of reason prescribes and reflective thinking.

The Principle of Reason and Information

How does the principle of reason operate within the “information age”? “Information” is sometimes called knowledge by students in their essays and exhibitions. Information is the bringing of what is encountered to a stand in the “form” in which it can “in-form” (in + form + ation). It is the principle of reason that is the suffix –ation, from the Greek aitia, or “that which is responsible for” the “form” so that it may “inform”. Data are those things that must be placed within a form so that they can become things that can “inform” or be rendered. The rendering of data as information requires the principle of sufficient reason to organize and classify the data so that it can “be” as object and as something calculable.

To “inform” is to render an account, to pass on what has been brought to a stand in human cognition as representational thinking. We require that this rendering or “giving an account” be as quick, comprehensive and efficient in bringing about results in the most efficient manner possible in order to assist us in securing our necessities, requirements, and satisfactions. We speak of this rendering of accounts as “empowerment”.  So it is that in our age the representation of language as an instrument of information has come to dominance and shows itself in our attempts to create machines with artificial intelligence and ever bigger, greater, more efficient computing frameworks with capacities for ever larger calculations. These attempts are based on our understanding of “intelligence” as information and contribute to the organizing within the framework that the principle of reason as the technological has established for itself.

In order to be passed on, what is encountered must be “trans-formed” into data so that it can be manipulated and controlled. As said above, the suffix “a-tion” comes from the Greek aition which was interpreted and translated as “cause” by the Romans. In this trans-formation of what is encountered into what is called in-formation, into data, what is encountered ceases to be an “object” for us and only retains its validity, its reality, as long as it retains its sense as data. As data, it ceases to be an independently standing object. The principle of reason requires that all that is encountered is understood as data. Until it is so understood, the thing encountered does not have a “reality” for us; it is not a “fact”.

Why this need for everything we encounter to be rendered as “information”? Because in its rendering as “information”, the principle of sufficient reason can hold sway. What is the consequence of seeing and hearing language and speaking as information? Because of this hearing and speaking, the possibility of a thoughtful conversation with a tradition that is considered to be our shared knowledge, a shared knowledge that could invigorate and nurture us, is lacking. Because language has been consigned to information, reflective thinking is pushed aside and is considered as something useless and superfluous. It is to the IB’s credit that it wishes to have TOK at the core of the Diploma program so that whatever embers might lie within our thinking that are the remnants of reflective thinking may still be able to catch fire and flame out as something other than calculative thinking.

What is the relation of the principle of reason to our personal knowledge and what we have come to call empowerment? It is the power of the principle of reason that “empowers” what we think personal knowledge is. The principle of reason governs all modern thought and action in the sense that it makes all modern thought and its consequences possible. It is the principle of reason that “empowers” the modern age to be what it is. At the same time, the principle of reason “overpowers” all thought and action making it difficult, if not impossible, to think and act except in the manner prescribed by the principle of reason. Our enchainment to the principle of reason requires that we “hear” what is being said in it and, at the same time, how the “mighty” principle” (in Leibniz’ word) has come to determine what is understood here as “technology” and its “empowerment” of human beings in the modern age. This attentive “hearing” requires that we begin to listen to what we hear which we have previously been inattentive to in the principle of reason; and this hearing and seeing requires a responsiveness, responsibility on our part to what is and what we are, and what we conceive ourselves to be, as human beings.

 

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