The Simplicity Of Reason

Logic itself is the simplest of things, as it is impossible for anything to be more fundamental.  Nothing could exist at or be reduced to a more foundational level.  Nevertheless, the information that must be examined by the illumination of logic can be vast, complex, and seemingly daunting.  It is the intersection of reason's simplicity and the potentially complicated nature of appraising miscellaneous information that makes reality far easier to understand than many will admit while also making it more difficult to understand than many others will accept.

One grasps logic directly and can wield it at any time.  In this sense, nothing is more accessible to every willing person.  This, however, does not mean that arriving at correct conclusions about every subject is an inherently easy matter.  On the contrary, there is a great volume of information--some of it pertaining to the senses, some pertaining to introspection, and some pertaining strictly to logic--that has to be dissected with reason if one wishes to have knowledge about as much of reality as possible.

Even discovering logical truths is not always an immediate process, for it might involve identifying and subsequently rejecting numerous non sequitur errors.  To prove that one is not dreaming during a given moment [1], for example, might ultimately be far simpler than many consider it to be despite the immense gravity of the matter (and despite the fact that only a very small number of people even understand/discover how to do this), and yet many issues must be contemplated to some extent before one could be in a position to prove something so specific and important.  The topic is therefore thoroughly nuanced.

Of course, few issues have a degree of complexity or depth comparable to that of proving that one is not dreaming, yet all issues have their relatively basic and complex dimensions.  It is still true that the purely syllogistic parts of proofs are often extraordinarily easy to grasp if one is willing, while discovering if various starting premises are actually correct, as well as sorting through the many relevant details that might need to be considered, can require time, precision, and careful reflection.

Many aspects of epistemology are quite elementary thanks to the irreducible simplicity of reason, although their sophistication is often overhyped, while many other aspects are complicated regardless; neither truth negates or conflicts with the other.  It is this paradoxical nuance that few are willing to approach.  Understanding reality with any level of thoroughness takes effort, after all, but the person who clings to reason will find that the task is far easier than it may otherwise seem.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html