 Reason is the capacity for cognition, understanding and the formation of judgments based upon logic or simply as the ability to think logically. Reasoning is the capacity or function of a conceptual system to process information and ideas according to an objectively consistent set of instructions. A central characteristic of reasoning as opposed to other forms of thinking is that it is based upon a coherent set of objective rules that govern the processing of information or ideas. Reasoning can be contrasted with cognitive processes governed by a subjective set of rules. Subjective sets of rules are based upon or influenced by personal feelings, tastes or opinions. Subjective rules are dependent upon the specific experience of the subject. A subject is a person or circumstance giving rise to a specific feeling, response or action. Thus it is specific to that instance. In contrary, objectivity means not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts or not dependent upon the specific subject for existence or actuality. Whereas the term reasoning refers to a purely conceptual process, the term rationality is the embodiment of this process within some phenomena. Rational means based on or in accordance with reason. Rationality implies the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for believing, of one's actions with one's reasons for action or the design of something according to an objective set of instructions. To illustrate how reason and rationality relate, one might think about the so-called age of reason. An age in European history that developed during the mid-1600s, largely as a product of newfound knowledge deriving from the scientific revolution. This knowledge was based upon a relatively objective set of rules, those of mathematics and scientific inquiry, that can be tested by anyone. Based upon this new knowledge, European countries developed a whole new set of what we call rational institutions, institutions that are based upon an objective set of instructions such as a constitution or modern legal code. These rules are publicly available for everyone to question and they are thought to derive from a coherent and objective body of knowledge. This may be contrasted with the previous political regime that was based upon a more subjective set of rules. Previous institutions of the Middle Ages were based largely upon the rules of an absolute monarch and aristocracy, which are largely subjective interpretations. Again, this could be contrasted to a moral code based upon reason, which was developed during the Enlightenment such as utilitarianism, that provides a set of rules that are designed to enable the maximum utility for the maximum number of people, which is a logical reason for their foundation and thus makes them rational institutions. Faith and reason are both sources of authority upon which beliefs may be founded. Reason commonly is understood as the product of a methodological inquiry, that is to say it involves some kind of algorithmic process whereby the end product is generated. This process can then be demonstrated and questioned by others. Once demonstrated, a proposition or claim is understood to be justified as true or authoritative based upon the process or method that created it. Faith and belief, on the other hand, involves a belief in some claim that is not demonstrable by reason. Thus faith is a kind of attitude of trust or assent. As such, it is typically understood to involve an act of will or a commitment on the behalf of the believer. Religious faith involves a belief that makes some kind of implicit or explicit reference to a transcendental source and that source provides the validity and authority to the statement rather than with reason where it is validated through the consistency of the process that creates them. Equally, one can contrast reasoning with knowledge or thinking based upon intuition and tradition. Trying to validate a concept based on intuition is largely a closed self-referential process. If we ask why do you believe such and such? Because I feel it's right. Why do you feel it's right? Because it feels right. With intuition, the insight is subjective and not generalizable in a way that a conclusion drawn through a process of logical reasoning is. The same is true for tradition, with tradition as a foundation for knowledge and practice. Something is true or justified because it has stood the test of time. However, this conservative logic is a self-reinforcing loop because as long as people are conservative, whatever existed in the past will be perpetuated and become more valid without any reason for being so to accept people's belief in tradition. This logic is not referring to anything outside of itself for its validity and thus it is subjective. Truth cannot be its own validation. Subjective concepts are relative only to a particular context or environment. For example, the knowledge of many traditional cultures around the world is specific to those cultures. Their knowledge of how to catch fish or why the sky is blue is only applicable or maintainable within their physical or socio-cultural environment while other cultures have other technical and spiritual beliefs that differ due to their development within a different context. To gain greater insight that is relevant within a broader environment it is necessary to bring disparate ideas, opinions or perspectives together in some way resolve their contradictions and differences to reach a deeper understanding. The process of doing this is called an argument. An argument is a process whereby diversion ideas or opinions are brought into contact and interact with the intent of inferring a conclusive single global outcome. Arguments can take two basic forms, fights or debates on whether they're based on force or the process of reasoning. Fighting is a form of argumentation that involves the use of physical force. The use of force can remove all opposition to some kind of subjective concept or opinion through a variety of forms such as physically destroying the dissenters, repression or some form of exclusion so that one side of the argument is not able to be developed or heard. However, this will only temporarily resolve the issue. It has not been overcome by creating a synthesis. The same flaws in one side's argument remain. The result of this is that we essentially go round in a circle using fear, intimidation and violence to remove dissent and perpetuating the limits in one side's logic. Everyone has feelings and opinions. However, reasoned arguments, what are called debates, expose these to a process for finding common ground and consensus without resorting to violence. This illustrates the linkage between reason and democracy. Democracy is designed to create the space for debate without resorting to violence in order to find resolutions to disparate opinions. This is in contrast to authoritarian systems that use the former method of fear, intimidation and violence for removing dissent. Just as reason is a delicate and fragile balancing act, true democracy is likewise. Debates involve members with divergent opinions or perspectives communicating a reason or set of reasons for their opinion with the implication or explicit aim of persuading others that an action or idea is valid. This form of collective reasoning may also be called a dialectic. The dialectic method is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments. The term dialect is not synonymous with the term debate. While in theory, debaters are not necessarily emotionally invested in their point of view. In practice, debaters frequently display an emotional commitment that may cloud rational judgment. Debates are one through a combination of persuading the opponents, proving one's argument correct or proving the opponent's argument incorrect. Debates do not necessarily require promptly identifying a clear winner or loser. However, clear winners are frequently determined by either a judge, jury, or by group consensus. The term dialectics is also not synonymous with the term rhetoric, a method or art of discourse that speaks to persuade, inform, or motivate an audience. With reason, we're trying to take what is unknown or has a number of possible explanations and create a consensus on what is known, what we then call knowledge. In this way, trying to develop an integrated picture or explanation for events and in order to do that, we have to reconcile disparate knowledge, opinions, and information. Dialectic discourse is one process for doing this as it tries to develop knowledge by synthesizing divergent perspectives so that we can try to reach an agreement on what we consider knowledge. The development of the process of reason requires an open space. Within an individual, this is essentially an acceptance of not knowing, the possibility of a number of plausible explanations and a process of balanced inquiry. Within an organization or society, this requires some form of open public space for communications where divergent opinions and perspectives are encouraged or at least tolerated, the Greek forum being a classical example of this for the rise of public spaces that came about in the modern era and particularly in the age of enlightenment. Reasoning essentially means letting go of what we know and developing a system for generating knowledge based on a coherent and objective set of rules. As such, uncertainty plays an important part in this process. In fact, it has to be the initial condition. If we already know everything, there is no point in reasoning. In knowledge, we have to be open to uncertainty and not knowing. One has to suspend judgment and knowing until we have performed this process of inquiry. As the American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce stated it, upon this first, and in one sense this sole rule of reason, that in order to learn, you must desire to learn and in so desiring, not be satisfied with what you already inclined to think. Because one corollary, which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy, do not block the way of inquiry. Because reason is a process that gives some form of objective validation to a statement or way of being, people often desire the end product that is the objective validation of reason without conducting the process properly or fully. Reasoning is a process. Reasons create, transform or change things in some way. Thus we cannot know or should not know what the outcome to the process of reasoning will be beforehand. If we already know the answer, then the process of reasoning is simply a process of looking for validation to the answer that we already know. If we want to use reasoning to create new knowledge, then we cannot already know what it is we're looking for. Reason is an open and dynamic form of conceptual system. To reason is to be open to a number of outcomes. It is to conduct an inquiry without knowing what the end result will be. A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise false reasoning in the construction of an argument. A fallacious argument may be deceptive by appearing to be better than it really is. Some fallacies are committed intentionally to manipulate or persuade by deception while others are committed unintentionally due to carelessness or ignorance. Most of what we think we know is a product of our local environments. People typically adopt the information and knowledge presented to them by their culture with little questioning. People's opinions typically fit in with their environment and this has many advantages regarding reduction in cognitive workload and reducing social friction. Thus there is always a tension between this open-ended process of reasoning and the existing status quo of what already exists within our environment. The desire to not diverge from pre-existing establishment, the desire for conformity is a primary way that we manipulate the process of reasoning. We limit the set of possible outcomes to those that we desire before engaging in the process. Confirmation bias is a good example of this. We're simply using the process of reasoning to confirm a certain class of outcomes that we already know and thus simply endorse our preconceptions. People often use data to support a particular argument by only selecting the particular data or particular aspects of it that will lead to the desired outcome. The use of data to simply confirm one's preconceptions is a very common act. This is particularly attractive because it looks highly objective. Both the data and the process of reasoning may be valid but still the process has been manipulated to create a certain result due to the constraints and limitations on the input to the process. Knowledge cannot be established by incorporating it as part of the question. This is called begging the question. In such a case, we're simply engaged in a process of maintaining the status quo and using the process of reasoning to do this. This is a highly prevalent phenomena in our world, particularly in domains where there are deep vested interests, such as politics, business and many areas of everyday life. Reason displaces our subjective intuition of ourselves as being at the centre of the world and replaces it with some objective rules by just displacing the subject as the central point of reference and in so doing becoming part of a larger system of organisation. This is most clearly illustrated with the Copernican Revolution at the beginning of the modern era which through observation rather than dogma displaced humans and planet earth from the centre of the universe through careful observation of our broader environments and the rules that govern it that we're not at the centre of the universe. We displaced our subjective interpretation with one that is more objective as it is aligned with a broader logic of how the universe works and because of that more objective knowledge we're now able to do things like send people to the moon or go to other parts of the solar system. Reasoning is a commitment to creating justifiable knowledge. True reasoning is a delicate and sensitive balancing process it requires that one as an individual community or society adhere to some objective set of rules. The rise of reason during the modern era has made everything open to inquiry through thinking. Within modern rational societies everything is seen to be subject to reason. A society or individual governed by reason is one that continuously challenges and tests its most firmly held assumptions. To test their foundations to see how valid they actually are. To think and reason is to be on an open-ended journey where anything is open to question proven or disproven and if it is disproven it has to be let go. That's the idea of reason and rationality. This dynamic open-ended journey is one of the characteristics of the modern era being one of the hallmarks that distinguishes it from previous more traditional societies based upon subjective insight. Relative to traditional societies modern societies are highly dynamic. Like science modern societies are an open-ended journey and part of being a modern society is to leave behind the comforts of certainty based upon tradition.