Some Limits of Reason

The heart has its reasons that the mind knows nothing of.
So said Blaise Pascal. What are the limits of reason, I wonder, and especially in reference to the emotions or intuition? So much of our experience comes hard-wired into us, rather than rationally constructed through chains of reasoning. Optically, we know that an object is defined by the lines that enclose it, and we know this at a neural level that is unlearned. When an infant is able to focus his eyes he reacts to objects as separate from each other, indicating that object-recognition is hard-wired into our perceptual systems. Similarly, the other perceptual modalities are highly inborn and mediate our experiences of the world. These experiences are not rational, yet they do influence action and inform belief and understanding in ways similar to reason.

As for intuitions, they might be the product of background processing in the mind, and could lead to better choices in certain circumstances than pre-frontal cortical reasoning. As you can see I'm approaching this philosophical question from a scientific perspective. I'm doing this because it's a field that I know and because the question can be answered this way. It can be approached other ways, such as from the perspective of tastes and aesthetics, which can provide unreasoned reasons, though they don't necessarily do so (especially if you're in the habit of making aesthetic decisions after prolonged analysis).

Perhaps you're wondering why I put this in my blog at all. It's because I find it difficult to think through the problems posed by my "Introduction to Philosophy" by Pojman without resorting to verbal expression. As McLuhan says, the text inspires passive responses.