Where Does Reaction End and Reason Begin?
When a dog chews on a wire and the owner swats at it, and it does not go back to chew that wire, is the dog using reaction or reason? In Descartes’ book A Discourse on the Method, Descartes makes the argument that reasoning stems from the ability to form a language. This rules out animals because they are unable to invent their own language. Descartes believes that the decisions made by animals come from the nature inside of them. Men derive their decisions from the reasoning inside of them. Are animals not able to form their own reasoning? Can men not make decisions based off the nature in them, if there are any? Is Descarte correct in the belief that being able to invent a language and the ability to reason are one in the same?
What is communication? According to Descartes, it is defined as being able to form sounds or signs to be understood by those who are their habitual companions. Animals can have a form of communication. They can have mating calls and other things to express what they are needing. However, it is not true communication. Unlike animals, humans are able to invent words or signs and can learn new words and signs to be understood by other men.
Another difference in men and animals is our mental capacity. Descartes argues that animals have no mental powers and they rely solely on nature. The text says, “Rather, it shows that they have no mental powers whatsoever, and that it is nature that acts in them, according to the disposition of their organs; just as we see that a clock consisting only of ropes and springs can count the hours and measure time more accurately than we can spite all of our wisdom”(48). Does this mean that nature is more reliable than reason? I would argue yes. Just because I can have all the reasoning as of the how and why the clock works does not mean I would be as reliable as the clock to keep track of the time. The nature of the clock is its ability to keep an accurate measurement of the time. The reasoning of humans is to understand that the clock was programmed how the ropes and strings work. It can be concluded that nature and reasoning are different. However, can one have both reasoning and nature?
The nature of animals is their instinct to survive. An animal knows that it must eat everyday to survive. It does not have to reason that it needs food in order to live, it simply knows that it needs to find food everyday in order to survive. Humans are also capable of this instinct. A human knows that they must have food in order to survive. However, they have to reason which foods are good to eat and which foods are not. Personally, I think that humans have both nature and reason. However, I have concluded that animals only act with reaction or nature.
I have failed to define reasoning. Before I read the work of Descartes, I believed that reasoning was just using your own prior knowledge to come to a conclusion. While I still believe that to be partly true, I also believe it has to do more with step by step understanding. As stated above, when a dog chews on a wire and receives punishment for it, it does not go back to the wire. This is a one step process to come to the conclusion that the wire is bad. However, men have a much larger capacity to come to a conclusion. The ability to reason is a direct correlation to the ability to go through a multistep process to come to a conclusion.
The question proposed is this: what does language and reason have to do with one another? Descartes believes that man’s ability to reason has to do with being able to invent a language; therefore, since animals do not have the ability to invent a language, they do not have the ability to reason. But why does the ability to form a language determine reasoning? Inventing a language is a multistep process. You have to invent a word, determine what the action or object is correlated with that word, and teach it to others, then use the word to communicate. Reasoning is the same in this way. It is a multistep process. An example of this process is this: a person is going to the grocery store and sees that the road to the store is blocked. That person has to see that the road is blocked, form a different route to the store, and return back home the same way. This shows men’s ability to come to a conclusion through a multistep process.
To answer the posed question, yes I believe that Descarte was correct in the belief that being able to invent a language and the ability to reason are one in the same. Prior to reading his work, I believed all you needed was your own knowledge to come to a conclusion. However, my new definition for reasoning is this: using one’s knowledge to come to a conclusion through a multistep process. The last part of the definition is what separates men from animals. As much as people today would like to think that animals are just as smart as humans and have the same mental capacity, that is not the case. When an animal comes to a conclusion, it uses the nature inside of it to form a reaction. Humans can use the nature and wisdom inside of them to form a conclusion, not a reaction. Reaction ends with a one step process, reason begins in a multistep process. This is where the line is drawn between men and animals and reaction and reason.
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