This is a response to the third question
Reasoning is quite a tricky way of knowing, as it is the use of logical thinking to be able to try to make sense out of the things we want to know about. When we try to use use reasoning to make sense out of something, we would normally want to relate it to something that we can find a definite answer for, which is probably why it was the most popular way of knowing for a group of students, including myself, for the sciences (both natural and social) and as well as morality. In the things like the arts and religion, it turned out to be not much of a popular choice, and even voted the least popular way of knowing for art. The difference then lies with how “reason” as a way of knowing was compared to the other ways of knowing attributed to the different areas of knowledge.
It’s interesting to note that how in the sciences, reason trumps the polls, no questions asked. Although, when we look at religion and morality, while reason gets a substantial amount of votes, another leading way of knowing is then emotion. Now here’s another interesting thing to note about the surveys – if we look at art, where reason is clearly not as chosen as the best way of knowing, emotion trumps the polls. Now, if we try to compare, that means that religion and morality somewhat forms the bridge between our value of reason and its inverse relationship with our value of emotion as a way of knowing.
If we then try to think about how we can use this data to make sense out of what is religous and moral reasoning, then we can see that it’s not something that we can’t compare to be exactly alike to the way we reason in the sciences or in art. By taking emotion into the equation of our reasoning, then things suddenly become clouded with the human flaw (while being a human boon). When we reason out somethings that are more concrete, we stop start taking into much greater importance cold hard facts, tangible data, or observable patterns. We lose the sense of our belief, that we begin to reason because that’s how reality presents itself. But as humans, we are much deeper than that. Our emotions deepen the way we observe things, and then this is when we start reasoning in the sense of religion and morality. Religous and moral reasoning seeks to find truth into the beliefs of our greater conciousness that mere science can’t explain. We aren’t just a clump of strange matter, but we’re more than that, and we believe in things, and our emotions deepen our relationship to this belief, which in turn changes the way we reason things out. Religous and moral reasoning doesn’t seek to answer questions that basic reality can answer, but we seek to find even greater things, the keys outside the light we’re in in, the keys in the dark. Although, we cannot misuse each way of reasoning, as if misused, then they lose their true purpose and power, and so I cannot say which is actually better than another. If we try to relate this back to the arts, then we can see that because of our deeper consciousness and ability to know with our emotions, then it doesn’t really puzzle why reason is a clear loser to emotion when we talk about the arts, as how some people would put it – the arts are just another language for people to convey their emotions, and we’re not meant to reason our emotions.
The Lion Statue 