The Conclusion to My Response to Gabe's Response... ad infinitum

Good friend, my point is this:
Anyone who wants to denigrate reason as a means of knowing and communicating reality cuts off his (or her) own legs the minute s/he puts that idea to pen. When the pen hits the scroll, when the fingers hit the keys--boom, your cover's blown: Your a "modernist."
Now, the appropriate and oft-used retreat at this moment is: Ah, but Pete, I never said Reason was invalid as a means of knowing--only that it is but one among many. About that, let me say: yes, that is what you explicitly claim--that Reason is one among many equal avenues for pursuing truth (though you like to note how dodgy it is "viewed" to be)--but implicitly, you aren't quite as generous, sometimes accusing Blake and me of being modernists anytime we attempt to use reason as a means of arriving at, well, anything at all. But that's not the rabbit I'm chasing currently.

Here's what I was getting at with my earlier post: Reasoning--logical structures, arguments, codified thought--can take on a life of its own outside of human beings. But reason itself dwells within. It's a basic part of our apparatus for interpreting reality--including language itself. You often strike down Reason as an Enlightenment invention. I'll grant you that Abstract Reasoning was a cantankerous little organ that the Enlightenment gorged to grotesque proportions. But Reason, that little part within human beings that processes day-to-day reality, even language itself, is taken for granted by the ancients--it's presupposed. So if I try to unravel the great mystery of how many teeth a horse has through pure abstraction, well, that's me giving far too much hegemony to Reason. But if I determine what the length of a hypotenuse is based on Pythagorean Theorem, or if I decide on the meaning (even approximately) of what you said based on my knowledge of English semantics, or if I hear a general shout "Fire!" and pull the trigger because I think he meant "Fire!" rather than "Put that gun down, you idiot," then I am perfectly within my rights--reason in that sense is as intrinsic as sight. (It may break down largely into deductive and inductive reasoning, but I'm not sure that's quite where the dividing line is--I'm still working out my thoughts as well.)

So what makes me think reason deserves to generally be the king of my epistemology? Because reason is a whole lot harder to juke than, say, experience or emotions. Reason gets feedback from reality in a way that doesn't happen for the other epistemologies. Now at this point, you would be remiss not to accuse me of forgetting that ultimate reality is God. I know, and I agree. But because we are in a limited, finite form currently, we are a step removed from that reality--thus the immediacy of reason. Now, on the level of ultimate truth, of what value is reason beyond its usefulness in this world? I don't know--maybe it will be obliterated when full, glorious Truth is brought to fruition. But until then, it is indispensable. In a sense, then, experience and emotions may well be finally superordinate to reason--they may be much better avenues of coming into full contact with our God. (I'm not convinced that that's case, but I allow that it's possible.) And they may be equally noble and equally useful even here on earth--in certain contexts. ("I will sing/pray with the spirit and with the understanding.") But as epistemology for the day to day unraveling of the ephemeral, for deciphering the happenings of this accursed world, reason is at least indispensable. And I guess the reason I tend to think it's superordinate to the other epistemological means is that it resides over language (in my thinking), which I view to be superior to any other form of human communication in transmitting meaning.

Those are my thoughts as of now. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And avoid cliches like the plague.