Reason is the basis of the faculty known as reasoning.
The first thing to know, before entering fully into establishing the meaning of the term ratiocination , is its etymological origin. And that takes us to Latin, since it derives from the words “ratiocinium” and “ratiocinari”. The latter is a verb that can be translated as “reason.”
Reasoning is a concept that is linked to the ability to reason and its effects. The verb to reason, for its part, consists of the use of reason to produce knowledge and establish a judgment.
A faculty linked to reason
It can be said, therefore, that reasoning is a faculty derived from reason . When a person develops a thought or analyzes a fact or a speech, what he or she does is appeal to reason. Through complex brain activity, the individual puts into motion the different mechanisms of reasoning.
Reasoning, in this way, is linked to intelligence : the individual compares different judgments to formulate a new one, which is derived from previous ones. This means that reasoning allows us to produce knowledge through induction or deduction .
Reasoning is usually associated with intelligence.
Characteristics of reasoning
In addition to everything stated above, we would have to highlight the existence of another series of interesting data about reasoning, such as these:
-It has a logical structure, which is made up of antecedent, consequent and consequence.
-It necessarily requires the existence of a logical order.
-From the point of view that what concerns us is a mental operation, we find the fact that it is real and determined.
-For many scholars of the subject, reasoning is characterized as the act in which a person's mind is capable of going from the known to the unknown. For this, he uses all the knowledge he may have.
-Likewise, these experts indicate that the aforementioned reasoning is based on two basic laws or principles: that a true antecedent gives rise to a true consequent and that a true antecedent becomes knowledge that is also true.
-Argumentation in reasoning is its external expression.
-This element that concerns us is considered to be the third thought, since first the study of the idea arises, then the judgment and finally it.
One of the issues that reasoning allows is the comparison between concepts . An individual can listen to two different positions on the same topic, compare them and draw a conclusion. This process will be what allows generating new knowledge, different from the previous one.
Differences between humans and animals
It is possible to affirm, on the other hand, that reasoning differentiates human beings from the rest of the species. People reason, while animals act on instinct and have less developed thought structures.
Some specialists claim that certain animals also have reasoning, since they are able to make plans, appeal to logic and even develop abstract thoughts, although at a simpler level than humans.