Does Reason still Exist?

[Darth_Hel]

Reason is hiding, extremely well. At least that’s the belief of several characters who should know. But, how? Shards seem to be known by their touch on the wor”d, and how they interact with investiture, and Reason is either a very light touch or none at all.

So, assuming the vessel isn’t dead, and hasn’t removed itself from interacting with the Cosmere, then what has Reason done?

WoB says that one Dawnshard is different from the others, Dawnshards are pre-shattering and have different rules, and RAFO’d whether Change could mess with a Shard’s intent.

Is Reason’s Vessel both a Shard and Dawnshard? If any Shard could reason out how to best use a Dawnshard to modify intent it would be Reason themselves. If the intent of Reason is modified, then the others may not know to look for the new intent. Reason’s vessel could act without notice.

Barring that, Dawnshards have their own power. If the Vessel acts through that power instead of Reason’s investiture, it could allow them to appear as though they aren’t acting at all. No ripples of power that can be traced back to Reason.

[AlmightyGir]

I see no Reason.

[bmcclure7]

3 hours ago, Darth_Hel said:

Reason is hiding, extremely well. At least that’s the belief of several characters who should know. But, how? Shards seem to be known by their touch on the wor”d, and how they interact with investiture, and Reason is either a very light touch or none at all.

So, assuming the vessel isn’t dead, and hasn’t removed itself from interacting with the Cosmere, then what has Reason done?

WoB says that one Dawnshard is different from the others, Dawnshards are pre-shattering and have different rules, and RAFO’d whether Change could mess with a Shard’s intent.

Is Reason’s Vessel both a Shard and Dawnshard? If any Shard could reason out how to best use a Dawnshard to modify intent it would be Reason themselves. If the intent of Reason is modified, then the others may not know to look for the new intent. Reason’s vessel could act without notice.

Barring that, Dawnshards have their own power. If the Vessel acts through that power instead of Reason’s investiture, it could allow them to appear as though they aren’t acting at all. No ripples of power that can be traced back to Reason.

I don’t think any shard has a dawn shard of they did the other as would much more concerned 

[Ripheus23]

We see, from Hoid's getting zapped, that there is a danger of Dawnshards coming under some form of Shardic control. Like, that's what Hoid is doing with Sigzil then, trying to prevent his Dawnshard from falling into someone else's hands, someone under the control or influence of Retribution, or even the new Shard itself.

I am willing to guess that the Change Dawnshard is the specifically most dangerous of them even "by itself." So if Reason had one, perhaps this would be one that the other Shards did not perceive as threatening. Even Exist, for Hoid and Sigzil, results in them being severely compromised as to how much Physical damage they can do. So perhaps one of the two unidentified samples covers an arguably even less potentially destructive concept, like, "Hope," or, "Believe," or who knows what. (Indeed, imagine the mystical irony of the Shard of Reason coming dually equipped with a Dawnshard of Faith, say.)

In other words: it's an extremely intriguing possibility, with a huge amount of thematic potential, especially from the POV of an author with a deep religious and philosophical background. I wish I could find more evidence to back up your prediction, and maybe I'll even spend some time trying to on the Arcanum and the Coppermind. Bonus points if I can go to my own familiarity with academic philosophy, e.g. theories of reason, to try figuring out what Sanderson means to indicate about that Shard and its Vessel by giving it the Intent that he has (there's a WoB where he mentions Kant and Descartes in the same breath, for example, and Kant's layering of information/concept-types in the Critique of Pure Reason is isomorphic to the Physical/Cognitive/Spiritual/Beyond layering in Realmatics; and I think I've even seen Sanderson use explicitly technical type-theoretic language, but I'll have to double-check).

[Darth_Hel]

I do think Shards would be more worried if they found out a Shards had a Dawnshard but based off Hoid at the end of the book I don’t think know where all the Shards are, and they don’t seem to be able to locate Reason either. So, these combined would mean they might not know to worry.

[Ripheus23]

26 minutes ago, Darth_Hel said:

I do think Shards would be more worried if they found out a Shards had a Dawnshard but based off Hoid at the end of the book I don’t think know where all the Shards are, and they don’t seem to be able to locate Reason either. So, these combined would mean they might not know to worry.

I think it's somewhat strange that Odium being in a system where multiple Dawnshards were popping up was not more concerning to e.g. Endowment. Arguably, the Shards don't fully know the locations of these, though e.g. Honor/Tanavast seems to have been aware enough of them to surmise that Rosharans no longer could avail themselves of the things to fight Odium.

So, I'm not sure how much the Shards are worried about the Dawnshards in general. I also don't know why they wouldn't be worried, though.

Now something about Reason is getting to me: in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, he identifies reason as the "faculty" that motivates people to try to come up with all-encompassing theories of reality, to "think through infinity." So Reason in the cosmere might motivate its Vessel to try to form an all-encompassing theory of Realmatics, one that would effectively settle the question of the Beyond. (Kant says that we can't accomplish this kind of goal, though, and that the result of trying too hard to do so is "transcendental illusion.")

One of the ways in which Kant's pure reason tries to compass the cosmos is by deciding the extent of space: finite or infinite. Strangely, the cosmere is not only finite but if Reason wants to hide and survive, why not leave the cosmere? If the cosmere is contiguously embedded into a galaxy, for example, rather than being mystically assembled from discontiguous regions therein, and the average galaxy has way, way, way more than 100 star systems in it, wouldn't there be more than enough space to escape to???

On the other hand, I don't know that there's a WoB saying what the true extent of the space is like outside the cosmere. I think there's something acknowledged about there being such an outside, but not how much it extends. But so let's say Reason is motivated to comprehend, not only the totality of space in the cosmere, but also of the universe into which it's embedded.

Now, as of Einstein and Co., we realized that Kant's dichotomy was too limited: another option, for example, is space being finite but unbounded. Like an old-school video game where, when you go off the edge of the screen in one direction, you "wrap around" to the same angle on the opposite side of the screen; but so like that, in three dimensions instead of just two. So, what if there is a warping of the space at the "edge" of the cosmere, that has a similar effect? So that you'd have to "teleport through" the "edge" to get to the rest of the universe, which is why the Coppermind says only, "At least one person has tried to leave the physical bounds of the cosmere, with unknown results.^[22][23]"

I tried analyzing the thread about the secret of the Roshar map, to see if I could fit any of that into this, but no dice, I assume it's at least technically relevant but I'm not competent right now to really say why.

So anyway, there are Four Antinomies of Pure Reason, of which the spatial-extent problem is the first example. Let's suppose that there's an obscure correlation between each Antinomy and each Dawnshard:

1. The First Antinomy: the extent of space and time: either infinitely outwards and backwards, or finitely outwards and backwards. "Solution": spacetime is not absolutely real/substantial, and extends indefinitely in all directions, so neither finitely nor infinitely (in the appropriate sense). Modern update: spacetime can be finite but unbounded.
2. The Second Antinomy: the divisibility of matter: either continuously to infinity, or with a proper "smallest scale." "Solution" (again): the divisibility of matter is "indefinite" and matter is not completely and utterly real (it's partly real, partly non-real).
3. The Third Antinomy: the regress of cause-and-effect vs. strong free will: either there is an unbroken, unending chain of causes and effects going backwards, or there is spontaneous causality. "Solution": as above again.
4. The Fourth Antinomy: the regress of modality, of necessity and contingency. So, either an infinite sequence of contingencies dependent on other contingencies, or a necessary source. "Solution": ibid.

Offhand, modality has to do with the concept of existence (esp. as the concept of actuality, though this conflation is disputable, see e.g. the SEP entry on possible objects). Change has to do with cause-and-effect and willpower, though there is also an "argument from change" to the necessity postulate modulo the Fourth Antinomy.

Anyway, then, the other two Dawnshards, if so correlated, would be for concepts pertinent to the totality of spacetime, and the divisibility of matter. If Reason held the Dawnshard correlated with the totality of spacetime, this could be relevant to the process of trying to escape the bounds of the cosmere. But what would this be? For the Dawnshards are Commands, used to create the cosmere as a totality. So I could see Adonalsium saying, "Exist," unto the cosmere, to make it exist in terms of the regress of modality; and saying, "Change," unto the cosmere, to make it change from cause to effect to cause to effect, at indefinitum. But what would be the Command for the boundaries in the extent and composition of this structure? "Extend"? "Compile"?

Well, if that could be how it goes, then let's say that Reason has the Extend Dawnshard.

Sidebar: one of the Dawnshards is "not like the others." Incidentally, so is one of the Antinomies, the fourth one, because this is the one that leads to the contemplation of the "Beyond" (not Kant's exact term, but equivalent in meaning to what Sanderson is talking about when he says "the Beyond" as an unknowable domain). If Hoid wants to deal with the concept of "the Beyond" in terms of bringing someone back to life or whatever we think he's thinking along those lines, and if the Exist Dawnshard were Antinomic in principle and specifically correlated with the Fourth Antinomy as such, then Hoid's is the one that's "not like the others" in that regard, maybe.

[Argenti he/him]

5 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

I think it's somewhat strange that Odium being in a system where multiple Dawnshards were popping up was not more concerning to e.g. Endowment. Arguably, the Shards don't fully know the locations of these, though e.g. Honor/Tanavast seems to have been aware enough of them to surmise that Rosharans no longer could avail themselves of the things to fight Odium.

So, I'm not sure how much the Shards are worried about the Dawnshards in general. I also don't know why they wouldn't be worried, though.

Now something about Reason is getting to me: in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, he identifies reason as the "faculty" that motivates people to try to come up with all-encompassing theories of reality, to "think through infinity." So Reason in the cosmere might motivate its Vessel to try to form an all-encompassing theory of Realmatics, one that would effectively settle the question of the Beyond. (Kant says that we can't accomplish this kind of goal, though, and that the result of trying too hard to do so is "transcendental illusion.")

One of the ways in which Kant's pure reason tries to compass the cosmos is by deciding the extent of space: finite or infinite. Strangely, the cosmere is not only finite but if Reason wants to hide and survive, why not leave the cosmere? If the cosmere is contiguously embedded into a galaxy, for example, rather than being mystically assembled from discontiguous regions therein, and the average galaxy has way, way, way more than 100 star systems in it, wouldn't there be more than enough space to escape to???

On the other hand, I don't know that there's a WoB saying what the true extent of the space is like outside the cosmere. I think there's something acknowledged about there being such an outside, but not how much it extends. But so let's say Reason is motivated to comprehend, not only the totality of space in the cosmere, but also of the universe into which it's embedded.

Now, as of Einstein and Co., we realized that Kant's dichotomy was too limited: another option, for example, is space being finite but unbounded. Like an old-school video game where, when you go off the edge of the screen in one direction, you "wrap around" to the same angle on the opposite side of the screen; but so like that, in three dimensions instead of just two. So, what if there is a warping of the space at the "edge" of the cosmere, that has a similar effect? So that you'd have to "teleport through" the "edge" to get to the rest of the universe, which is why the Coppermind says only, "At least one person has tried to leave the physical bounds of the cosmere, with unknown results.^[22][23]"

I tried analyzing the thread about the secret of the Roshar map, to see if I could fit any of that into this, but no dice, I assume it's at least technically relevant but I'm not competent right now to really say why.

So anyway, there are Four Antinomies of Pure Reason, of which the spatial-extent problem is the first example. Let's suppose that there's an obscure correlation between each Antinomy and each Dawnshard:

1. The First Antinomy: the extent of space and time: either infinitely outwards and backwards, or finitely outwards and backwards. "Solution": spacetime is not absolutely real/substantial, and extends indefinitely in all directions, so neither finitely nor infinitely (in the appropriate sense). Modern update: spacetime can be finite but unbounded.
2. The Second Antinomy: the divisibility of matter: either continuously to infinity, or with a proper "smallest scale." "Solution" (again): the divisibility of matter is "indefinite" and matter is not completely and utterly real (it's partly real, partly non-real).
3. The Third Antinomy: the regress of cause-and-effect vs. strong free will: either there is an unbroken, unending chain of causes and effects going backwards, or there is spontaneous causality. "Solution": as above again.
4. The Fourth Antinomy: the regress of modality, of necessity and contingency. So, either an infinite sequence of contingencies dependent on other contingencies, or a necessary source. "Solution": ibid.

Offhand, modality has to do with the concept of existence (esp. as the concept of actuality, though this conflation is disputable, see e.g. the SEP entry on possible objects). Change has to do with cause-and-effect and willpower, though there is also an "argument from change" to the necessity postulate modulo the Fourth Antinomy.

Anyway, then, the other two Dawnshards, if so correlated, would be for concepts pertinent to the totality of spacetime, and the divisibility of matter. If Reason held the Dawnshard correlated with the totality of spacetime, this could be relevant to the process of trying to escape the bounds of the cosmere. But what would this be? For the Dawnshards are Commands, used to create the cosmere as a totality. So I could see Adonalsium saying, "Exist," unto the cosmere, to make it exist in terms of the regress of modality; and saying, "Change," unto the cosmere, to make it change from cause to effect to cause to effect, at indefinitum. But what would be the Command for the boundaries in the extent and composition of this structure? "Extend"? "Compile"?

Well, if that could be how it goes, then let's say that Reason has the Extend Dawnshard.

Sidebar: one of the Dawnshards is "not like the others." Incidentally, so is one of the Antinomies, the fourth one, because this is the one that leads to the contemplation of the "Beyond" (not Kant's exact term, but equivalent in meaning to what Sanderson is talking about when he says "the Beyond" as an unknowable domain). If Hoid wants to deal with the concept of "the Beyond" in terms of bringing someone back to life or whatever we think he's thinking along those lines, and if the Exist Dawnshard were Antinomic in principle and specifically correlated with the Fourth Antinomy as such, then Hoid's is the one that's "not like the others" in that regard, maybe.

I'll be real you lost me about halfway through, and I'm sure others too, but this seems cool! I like the "extend" dawnshard. Seems funky

[TheoreticalMagic]

Honestly, I mostly just ascribe to the Reason is hidden on Roshar theory because I WANT it to be true as I hope all the remaining Shards are still in play. I'm always bummed when we find out that one of the Shards (or even just Vessels) has been relegated a non-player offscreen way back in the days of cosmere backstory. I understand WHY it happens that way, a certain degree of mythic events that happened in the mists of pre-history helps build the epic scope of the cosmere, but finding out after the fact that Ambition, Devotion and Dominion were all dead and Shattered, and that Virtuosity Splintered itself before we ever got to "meet" them.....it always gets an "aww, man" moment from me.

And with Ruin and Preservation "dead" - or at least their Vessels, even if the power lives on as Harmony, and same with Tanavast and Rayse.....of the active Shard players that have been around the whole time, we really only have Endowment, Autonomy and Cultivation at this point. So with no real idea yet of Valor, Invention, Mercy, Whimsy and Reason's statuses, I would rather they were all still Unshattered and at least a few of them with their original Vessels, because I'm far more interested in the clash of personalities between the beings that we KNOW have history than meeting the remaining five Shards and finding out they're all effectively new players with none of that epic history.

I do expect that probably one or two have changed hands or had something significant happen, and this is definitely an interesting idea. Of all the remaining Shards, I feel like Reason is the biggest wildcard, because the mere fact that nobody has seemed to have any contact with them or sense of their doings in ten thousand years means pretty much anything could be going on with them.

Edited January 13, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[Darth_Hel]

Just from this story, I feel most comfortable that Reason and Valor have some role to play. With Hoid searching for Valor and Reason set up as a mystery to solve. But, can’t be 100% sure.

[Irish Truthwatcher]

Crackpot theory but could Reason have invested itself in the cognitive realm of a system? Do we know if the plasma storm of Devotion and Dominion was simply because of their death, or due to too much shardic power being invested in the cognitive realm? If the prior is the case, maybe  reason has settled into the cognitive realm. 

The way Reasons been set up in the story, (last shard revealed, hidden from Odiums view etc. etc.) leads me to believe that the Shard must be located somewhere we've already visited. (Roshar? or Threnody? The three simple rules are pretty rational, plus we've heard that Threnody's cognitive realm is super dangerous, similar to Sel's.) I doubt the shard would have changed intent without anyone else realizing though. But then again, he's invisible to Odium.

Edited January 15, 2025 by Irish Truthwatcher

[Argenti he/him]

8 hours ago, Irish Truthwatcher said:

Crackpot theory but could Reason have invested itself in the cognitive realm of a system? Do we know if the plasma storm of Devotion and Dominion was simply because of their death, or due to too much shardic power being invested in the cognitive realm? If the prior is the case, maybe  reason has settled into the cognitive realm. 

The way Reasons been set up in the story, (last shard revealed, hidden from Odiums view etc. etc.) leads me to believe that the Shard must be located somewhere we've already visited. (Roshar? or Threnody? The three simple rules are pretty rational, plus we've heard that Threnody's cognitive realm is super dangerous, similar to Sel's.) I doubt the shard would have changed intent without anyone else realizing though. But then again, he's invisible to Odium.

Threnody's cognitive is dangerous because of the shades / deepest ones / Evil. Murder ghosts are generally deadly.

[Ripheus23]

10 hours ago, Irish Truthwatcher said:

Crackpot theory but could Reason have invested itself in the cognitive realm of a system? Do we know if the plasma storm of Devotion and Dominion was simply because of their death, or due to too much shardic power being invested in the cognitive realm? If the prior is the case, maybe  reason has settled into the cognitive realm. 

The way Reasons been set up in the story, (last shard revealed, hidden from Odiums view etc. etc.) leads me to believe that the Shard must be located somewhere we've already visited. (Roshar? or Threnody? The three simple rules are pretty rational, plus we've heard that Threnody's cognitive realm is super dangerous, similar to Sel's.) I doubt the shard would have changed intent without anyone else realizing though. But then again, he's invisible to Odium.

Tangent, but I'll see your crackpot theory and raise you a hopefully worse one: when Odium fought Ambition, he was wounded in a way that played into the making of at least some of the Unmade. Generally, he became Connected to the fact that he had murdered Uli Da, and the Deepest Ones on Threnody are, in fact, the Deepest Ones from Roshar. The reason being that, w.r.t. the Shadow-substrate of the Fused, sometimes the circuit that runs the makay-im to Roshar, from Braize, "short circuits" and transfers the Shadow, through Odium's Connectivity/Spiritweb, to Threnody instead.

Going back to the matter of the Unmade: the Evil is an effluence of Midnight Essence, related to if not caused by Re-Shephir, and the Unmade are not only the Ringwraith/Forsaken counterparts in the Archive, but all the meta-series 

[alder24]

On 1/15/2025 at 6:43 PM, Irish Truthwatcher said:

Crackpot theory but could Reason have invested itself in the cognitive realm of a system? Do we know if the plasma storm of Devotion and Dominion was simply because of their death, or due to too much shardic power being invested in the cognitive realm? If the prior is the case, maybe  reason has settled into the cognitive realm. 

The storm on Selish CR is the Dor and it's because of their death. Odium pushed their investiture from the Spiritual Realm to the Cognitive Realm and stuffed it there, to prevent anyone from Ascending to D&D. This created a deadly storm because investitures of Devotion and Dominion are opposed to each other (just like it was with Preservation and Ruin).

Spoiler

Questioner

So we know that you can't just have someone-- If someone were to do something similar to Hoid, he can't just pop and go "Oh look, I can now do Allomancy or I can now do Surgebinding". What about Breath? If someone could somebody get Breath-- Maybe not *audio obscured* Could they still get the benefits of--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, good question... Yes you can, actually. Breath is-- Once it is given to you, it is being keyed to you. Your Identity. So that transfer makes it yours to use however you want.

Questioner

So you could Awaken?

Brandon Sanderson

You could Awaken. If you-- If you were to somehow make it there, you would be able to Awaken. It's the easiest of magic systems to get the magic from, and then to manipulate. Because it has keyed into it Identity.

Questioner

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you can take Breath onto another world. In fact, you've seen characters do this.

Questioner

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

It would work, yes.

Questioner

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it would work the same way.

The only magic that is location-dependent--  The ones who aren't interested in this, just hum to yourself, okay? *laughter* You don't need to know any of this stuff to enjoy the books, okay? I write them so that you could just-- each series can be read independently, and enjoyed. There is behind the scenes stuff, and if you want to dig, it goes pretty deep.

So on Sel, we have AonDor. AonDor is based on the fact that the Dor, which is an amalgamation of Dominion and Devotion, has been pressed together and stuffed into the Cognitive Realm by Odium who didn't want it to gain sentience, as Investiture will do if it is left alone. It will either seek someone to be its Vessel or it will gain sentience. He pressed it in there; he pressed it together, which creates the violent reaction, because those two intents are opposed. And that is the foundation of the magic. Because it's stuck in the Cognitive Realm rather than the Spiritual Realm (the Spiritual Realm is location-independent; Cognitive Realm is location-dependent), it makes the magic on Sel only work in close proximity to what is keyed through there to the location they're keyed to. This has to do with Identity and Connection. Mostly Connection. So that means you can't do AonDor on another planet, but you can do other magics works anywhere, because they're drawing the magics specifically through either the place, or they're end-neutral, like Breath is, and you don't need any extra power.

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On 1/15/2025 at 6:43 PM, Irish Truthwatcher said:

or Threnody? The three simple rules are pretty rational, plus we've heard that Threnody's cognitive realm is super dangerous, similar to Sel's.

The clash of three Shards near Threnody created waves of destruction that mutilated Threnody, created Shades, the Evil and all this dangerous stuff. What we see on Threnody is a direct consequence of this fight and subsequent Splintering of Ambition, which was kind of similar to the Splintering of D&D which ended with Dor in the Cognitive Realm. AU The Threnodite System Essay:

Quote

The direct clash between two Shards of Adonalsium had a profound effect on the planets of this system. Though the actual battle took place in the vast space between planets—and though the true contest happened mostly in other Realms—the ripples of destruction and change washed through the system. Investigations into how this changed the other planets of the system have been fruitless, as none of them have perpendicularities to allow physical visitation.
Fortunately I have personal access to someone from Threnody, the third planet in the system. Judging by the records that Nazh has provided, I have concluded that some measure of Investiture must have existed on this planet before the battle between Shards. However, the waves of destruction— carrying ripped-off chunks of Ambition’s power—twisted both the people and the planet of Threnody.

 

Spoiler

Questioner

So, Sel: Investiture has been pushed into the Cognitive Realm. Threnody: Has it seen something similar?

Brandon Sanderson

It has not seen... Okay. Yes, something similar. It would count. Something similar, yes.

Questioner

If that's the case, what would happen if you were to push Investiture into the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

It generally manifests either as a solid, liquid, or gas

Questioner

I thought about that. I was like, "We've seen that," but it seemed like a concentrated form. What if you did for like a whole Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

That would probably have disastrous effects. 

Questioner

That's why I was thinking for Threnody, but if it hasn't been that, then something else happened.

Brandon Sanderson

It hasn't been that. Something else happened.

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