This type of reason may be called subjective reason. It is essentially concerned with means and ends, with the adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted and supposedly self-explanatory. It attaches little importance to the question whether the purposes as such are reasonable.
judgment of fact,’ says Russell,3 one of the most objectivist thinkers among subjectivists, ‘is capable of a property called “truth,” which it has or does not have quite independently of what any one may think about it. … But … I see no property, analogous to “truth,” that belongs or does not belong to an ethical judgment.
This, it must be admitted, puts ethics in a different category from science.’
WHEN THE ordinary man is asked to explain what is meant by the term reason, his reaction is almost always one of hesitation and embarrassment. It would be a mistake to interpret this as indicating wisdom too deep or thought too abstruse to be put into words.