Reasoning and Confidence

2015-02-08

I just had a long conversation with one of my daughters, and during the course of our conversation I described the line of enquiry into the reasoning process that the online study groups have taken up. When she asked me if participants had come to anything through these efforts I responded that from their own accounts the answer to that question appeared to be “yes”.

During our subsequent conversation I suddenly saw a powerful but indirect influence that comes from a sincere application of the reasoning process. What I’m referring to is a sense of confidence that accompanies real efforts toward reasoning. This can happen even if the reasoning process does not find a ‘solution’ to a particular problem.

For example, we may sometimes find ourselves in front of a difficult situation, and our deepest, clear-headed reasoning may show us that there’s no way out of it, that nothing can be done to fix the situation. If we have confidence in our reasoning process, that we haven’t overlooked anything significant, we can also have the confidence to let go of our anxiety and simply accept the situation as it is.