Reason or Deduction

 Reason or Deduction

Reason is thinking as the effort to get clear about the meaning of an idea, thought, word or sensation. Deduction is the process of transforming an idea into a proposition, a T-F statement or implication, in a logical sense as necessarily entailing a certain conclusion.  Deduction is more easily understood as drawing a valid conclusion.

Hegel differentiated himself from Descartes' innovation of the proposition.  For Hegel, concepts are used to clarify. The direct awareness of a concept is mediated by reflection - reason as thinking - to produce a clearer concept. Recall that for Descartes the issue is 'clear and distinct ideas.'  Propositional thinking takes the concepts, or words, as given, whereas Hegel provided arguments that propositions required conceptual clarification, thus Hegel's emphasis is on the 'concept.'

A concept is a word plus an idea. A proposition is a combination of ideas: two or more concepts in a meaningful statement, often as a subject-predicate sentence.

Logic begins with identity, A is A. Adorno criticizes the static notion of identity as not only atemporal, A may be not-A at a different time, but also for rejecting the existence of contradictions and paradoxes.  Identity thinking is idealistic: A = A is "ideal truth."  Identity may also be concrete or particular through difference.