Two things seem crucial. The first is paying really good attention to what happens and what sort of motivation and preceding thinking, framing the situation feeling led to what kind of choices that lead to those things happening.

The second is being very honest in doing the first.

These two together teach one rather quickly that good results come from more honest and rational choices and more honest and rational choosing of values.

ask Mr Spock.

Now it makes sense. My specific question was on the ability to reason which is why I asked the follow up questions. I was confused and now I have clarity. Thanks for the reply.

I am afraid the we are speaking about apples and oranges. The ability to reason is not the same as thinking logically. Sure we can reason innately, but we cannot think logically innately.

The human brain can be programmed. It depends upon the child's personality and how his or her brain functions.
Psychoepistemology is the study of how the brain reasons and stores knowledge. If your parents had the ability to not face reality and then consequently use emotion instead of reason to raise children, you would have to be very strong-willed to avoid psychological damage and hence have an innate ability to reason...
That is until life hands you enough experiences that you begin to think for yourself.

Doesn't it require the power to reason to make that decision to find a better way to learn?

Agreed. We can all learn and improve our abilities in reasoning, as well as in athletics. Each individual, however, has aptitudes to learn some things more easily and quickly than others -- as Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (http://jocrf.org/aptitudes) has been demonstrating for nearly a hundred years.

On the other hand, "[A]ll babies are born {or, rather, conceived] geniuses and [most] get swiftly de-geniused.
-- Buckminster Fuller

I'm going to ask you the same question that I asked someone else because I want to hear from people who say reason is not innate. I'm not trying to be redundant, only to get the same question answered.

If reason is not acquired at birth how can we explain the ability of a young child to learn? For example, if a child touches something hot they pull back because of the pain but they also quickly learn that touching the same thing again will result in the same pain. Seems to me that is the power to reason. If not wouldn't they just keep touching it unless there was someone there to stop them? IMHO, there are many lessons that are either taught or learned that would not be possible without the power to reason. Thoughts??

If it is not acquired at birth how can we explain the ability of a young child to learn? For example, if a child touches something hot they pull back because of the pain but they also quickly learn that touching the same thing again will result in the same pain. Seems to me that is the power to reason. If not wouldn't they just keep touching it unless there was someone there to stop them? IMHO, there are many lessons that are either taught or learned that would not be possible without the power to reason. Thoughts??

Logic and reason can come from many factors. If you are in a large family or the middle child, conflict resolution becomes your mantra. You therefore tend to think logically how to respond to get the "best" from and for all involved. This reasoning adds to the ability of logical thinking. I think everyone has the ability and it how you want to progress in that area tends to lead. Look at your heroes as a child and as an adult - were they logical or at least attempted to be? These are the example we tend to follow and add to ourselves.

There is a fair amount of research on biological bases for moral reasoning - all are heuristic and few are what we would call "rational." To debug this system requires training - ain't gonna happen otherwise.

And, some have greater aptitudes for this training.

A natural ability? No. A higher propensity and capacity for reason. Absolutely.

I is one. My family freaked at me. It was just natural for me.

Oh do I envy you your past. I played the music on my phonograph that you mentioned every day as I grew up, and others too. My father's only comment was, "Do you have to play that thing so loud?"

Franz was not a pretty boy by any standard. A beaked nose, a prominent mole, wore a greasy looking caftan, and assumed the air of a mystic. But for the time, his performances were almost miraculous But then, as the old saying goes, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

Lucky you, to have grown up in such a
musical environment! Chopin,Liszt - the greats!
My dad was also born in Hungary; didn't
play piano but could rock a harmonica like
no other!!

A quick scan of history would suggest that reason is not innate, but must be learned. It could also suggest that it's a natural need, and that people are attracted to any ideology that offers a coherent view of the world, even if it's flawed, which is what we've seen throughout history. An alternative suggestion might be that we've been groping through the centuries for better, more complete worldviews that we can use, and reason is just the latest in a long line of continually improving levels of reason.

Ugly? Maybe to you, man. To women he was most attractive with a magnetic personality and magnificent eyes. Princesses and countesses and commoners lusted after him. One even bore him 3 children. Disclosure: my father (born in Hungary in 1894) was a concert pianist and specialized in Liszt (and Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, et al.). I didn't know how lucky I was, growing up with that music as my father practiced daily. He had large, beautiful hands, too.

You are factually inaccurate, wiggys. While there are some aspects of human life that are totally environmental (which religion you have, which language you speak) the Minnesota Twin Studies (back in 1979) observed that the aptitude for language (of whichever place you live) is about 80% defined by heredity. This finding has been upheld by subsequent twin studies (though with slightly varying percentages). If twins are adopted in different countries, for example, they each learn their native language with the same degree of literacy and fluency as the other twin - even though the languages themselves are different.

The statement that 'humans do not have inherent qualities' represents a theory that has been overturned by the Twin Studies and other research.

Jan

I believe everyone is born with the ability to reason, it is just that many don't use it. In many cases because it is taught away from them.

I feel for you with liberal children but applaud you do doing the best you can to help your grandson learn critical thinking, and not the common core kind either. I would concur your successful life if the lessons change him. We need all the help we can get. I say keep corrupting...the way you are. :)

I pictured some of the old stories of 'feral children' "raised in the wild"... Any "education" they received were modifications to basic instincts, and I don't consider that to be a significant "learning to think."
I do believe that people, as they develop, probably have some innate "knacks" for doing better at certain things than others, whether it's "thinking" or athletics or art or whatever!
I think that trying to figure that one out is mental masturbation, and we'd be better off by Observing the Developing Child, trying to Discover their 'knacks' and helping them develop whatever innate skills or talents they're "good at."
I've got an Extremely Bright 'grandson' who's been open to questioning life and observing it forever. His parents are extremely liberal and I'm not, but over the past few years, I've introduced him to My Version of Critical Thinking, based roughly on Socratic Processes. Now he loves to ask questions and explore "answers" with me and I treasure our conversations together. I can nudge him in directions that might be more congruent with MY views than his parents' but I do it by repeatedly asking, "Well WHY does THAT happen?" and encouraging HIM to try to figure out the answers without just 'giving him the answer,' whether it's my view or someone else's.
I jokingly refer to 'corrupting his mind' and he keeps coming back to ask me more questions. Often, he'll ask me what 'my take is' on some subject. If I have an opinion or belief, I will readily provide my view, but immediately turn the conversation Socratic so we can both try to figure out why I, he, or others have the views they hold on the subject.
That may end up being the greatest contribution I ever make to the world in my life. I'll call my life 'successful' if those lessons have changed him.

Is your meaning of education the act of being taught or does it include the ability to learn without instruction?

INHERENT; Existing in something as a permanent attribute or quality. How did the "something" become a permanent attribute? If you refer to an animal they have inherent qualities for survival but if you refer to humans they do not; humans must go through the learning process and then once learned and applied this knowledge can become inherent. There is much I know today with respect to what i do in my business to survive that was not inherent knowledge in my brain but acquired over many years. The same holds true for doctors, lawyers, pilots and probably what you do to survive. So the key is getting educated.