Logic vs. Reason

Logic should never, ever be confused with reason. This is a grave mistake that academism (i.e., all forms of exoteric knowledge), especially philosophy, makes.

Logic's sole concern is with the development of premises (i.e. what conclusion can I derive from a given set of premises) with no concern whatsoever with the quality of those premises. It may be perfectly logical to kill somebody with several swings of a baseball bat, if you start with the following two premises:

Premise 1: Everyone who ignores me should be killed.
Premise 2: This person in front of me is ignoring me.
Conclusion: Therefore this person should be killed.

That is a perfectly logical argument (it is an Aristotelian syllogism) -- no logician would disagree -- but is it reasonable? One of my favorite definitons of the entire field of philosophy comes from Manly P. Hall -- "Philosophy is the science of estimating values." He may as well have said "Philosophy is the science of estimating premises." That is, philosophy must not accept arbitrary premises! But rather work to discover reasonable premises, i.e., premises that are valuable, premises that have stood the test of time, and contribute the most to humankind. After discovering such premises, the philosopher may then use logic to find what conclusions may be derived from them. Do you see, then, how logic is simply a tool of, and therefore secondary to, reason? Modern philosophy is completely logical but totally unreasonable (as are most knowledge areas) whereas it should be completely reasonable and only use logic to develop its reasonable premises.

Take another example,

Premise 1: All elephants are pink.
Premise 2: My father is an elephant.
Conclusion: Therefore, my father is pink.

That is a perfectly logical development of premises. But no philosopher, not even the moderns, would declare that the argument is reasonable in any way. Academic philosophy, mathematics, and most areas of knowledge, are completely obsessed with logic but none of these disciplines are concerned with being reasonable. That is the reason that philosophy has become the obscure discipline it has, the reason it is ignored by the world at large, is because modern philosophy has, in fact, forsaken its most sacred duty, that is, not to estimate the qualities of argument (logic) but to estimate the quality of premises!