Can pure reason generate truth?

Question

I am not talking about "truth" as used by highschool level self appointed intellectuals or "aspiring philosophers". Maybe some of u can remember the following kinda answers to "What is truth" ie. "truth is beauty" or "truth is the substance of being..." Man this was potent answers for a lot of college kids "passing the pipe around" in the 60s. I"m talkin' bout the kinda answers to questions like "what is the cause of schizophrenia?" "what psychotherapy treatment methods best help a person to overcome dysthymia?" "are all mental disorder the result of our experiences or brain problems." "what are the yet unknow early indicators for the causes of the dementias?" What about cures? How can we better diagnosis and differentiale the types of neurological problems so we can find better and earlier signs and symptoms.........

Answer 1

The truth generates how it really is.

Answer 2

Pure reason can generate mathematical or logical truth.  Everything else requires observations and testing.  Drugs are not a source of truth.  Useful knowledge about dementia has come primarily from observation.

Answer 3

IMO reason alone will point people in the general direction of truth..... but it requires action to test that which reason brought.  It aslo requires a bit of luck sometimes to stumble on the answer.  

I think luck is way more important then people realize.

Answer 4

if you look carefull at the questions , you will see that none of the questions has an answer and will never evere have an answer where is asked for.

"what is the cause of schizophrenia?

maybe there are more than one causes , so you can not ask for THE cause.

"what psychotherapy treatment methods best help a person to overcome dysthymia?"

There might be more competing methods, you can not talk about THE BEST method.

"are all mental disorder the result of our experiences or brain problems?"

*all* ? what are brain problems..

"what are the yet unknow early indicators for the causes of the dementias?"

unanswerable by defintion, what are the yet unknown....

Answer 5

Truth can only be generated from the heart

Answer 6

This is called "rationalism" and it fails because any number of logically coherent pictures of what is going on can be drawn, but evidence will eliminate most.

Answer 7

If pure reason cannot generate truth then nothing can since reason is all we have.  For us,  consistency = truth, but most 'truth' arrives through simple observation, yet since perception is problematic somethimes, what is perceived is not necessarily truth.  As far as far figuring out neurological conditions more effectively, scientists, doctors, and psychologists simply need to continue to share information and work toward these causes.  I suppose 'truth generation' in terms of these matters is generally on the right track, since 'truth' has progressed in the last 100 years, through reason, observation, experiments, info-synthesis and such.  Some things are just hard to figure out and take time and genious to uncover, I don't know what else they can do except keep working hard, and occassionally think outside the box.

Answer 8

In spite of Immanuel Kant's protestations, there is no such thing as "pure" reason. That rubbish has stunted philosophy to the point where young philosophy students don't know the truth from their fingernails.

And your "cool" use of linguistics like "Man this was potent answers for a lot of college kids "passing the pipe around" in the 60s" does not impress anyone, rhetorically speaking.

Answer 9

The absolute truth can only be found in the book of life, and I do not mean the bible.