6. The Reason for Reasoning

Reasoning can be employed for an unspecifiable number of purposes, both good and bad. Some of history’s most notorious criminals have been possessed of finely tuned logical minds, logical in the sense that they reasoned consistently from the presuppositions with which they began.

The problem was that the presuppositions with which they began were false. In this little book we have been advocating a view of logic that regards it as more than mere consistent reasoning. To be consistent in one’s thinking if one’s thinking is askew (i.e., not consistent with the objective order of things) is not to be logical, in the right understanding of the term, for logic has essentially to do with the truth. To use reasoning for any purpose other than attaining the truth is to misuse it. The ideal implied in that assertion is a very high one, and our record for living up to it is not admirable. But ideals are about the what-should-be.

It is at times too easy to be so governed by our emotions in our reasoning that argument becomes primarily a means of venting our anger, or of vindicating ourselves, or of getting even, or of simply scoring points for the sake of self-aggrandizement. The truth is thus relegated to incidental status. In the ideal debate, the primary purpose of the debaters is not to triumph over each other, but rather by their combined efforts to ferret out the truth as it pertains to the issues being debated. As for winning at all costs? “At all costs” is a price no one can afford.