certainly, some people have inherently, better minds-just like some are better athletes.
The thing that limits ability to use reason is a purposeful decision to not PRACTICE reason and logic. (some are never taught it) In first and 2nd world countries today, that is no longer a valid excuse.

Hello edweaver,

'Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. thinking requires a state of full, or focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposely directed awareness of reality---or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make." TVOS, pg.22

It is true that people have different aptitudes in this regard, but it is also true that many are coddled and not pressed to think for themselves. In our present sociopolitical climate we are encouraged not to teach one to fish, but to give him fish. It is the same when it comes to thinking, when one would rather have you provide the answer to them rather than have you tell them to look it up or do their own research. It is Altruism being played upon. This is not how one learns to reason and use logic on their own. Our society has deemed it important to insure no one is left behind even if it means thinking for others. ...participation awards are a manifestation of this mentality. Nature would cull the mentally indolent or force them to think in order to survive, but governments are constantly trying to bring equality not by forcing the indolent to pull their weight, but for the producers to carry more. This is of course economic suicide as the nation is less productive and the productive become resentful of the ever-growing burdens; while the "needy" grow ever more resentful of the successful as they are increasingly blinded by their indoctrination. It is an indoctrination of class warfare that destroys the human will. Incentives matter. When one is guaranteed a basic standard of living by government, even if at the expense of others many will find that sufficient incentive to choose sloth. To think, or not to think, that is the question/choice.

In short, to answer your question: My opinion is that it is both. We may not be able to do much about one's nature at birth, but we can enhance or undermine one's future by what we do, or do not teach. If you are not taught to think for yourself you are a good follower and compliant serf... a parrot. This is no doubt attractive to our elitist and statist politicos.
Respectfully,
O.A.

I've often wondered if the ability to use language and the ability to reason from cause and effect have evolved simultaneously.

Language, to be effective, must be time dependent, just as reasoning from cause to effect is also time-dependent. In fact, the very earliest verbs, I think, like "go" and "be" have different roots for past or present tense. Children learn very early that no one ever "goed", one must "went". I believe that the past tense verb then, for essential motion or existence came later in the evolution of language, but that the ability to reason accompanied and even stimulated the development of language, and vice-versa.

This is something my few objectivist-minded friends (I'm in my mid-20s) and I often wonder about. There are a few of us who are perfectly content to sit around for hours and debate the minutiae of philosophical questions and our other friends want nothing to do with us. I honestly think the difference comes down to a thirst for knowledge. My rationalist friends and I read everything because we genuinely want to know about different rationales. And the more you're exposed to it and the more you recognize different rhetorical strategies, the more you automatically use them in conversation. I've noticed this difference in my college classes and in the quality of work I saw when I worked for my college newspaper. It's an initial act of volition to think, and then it gets easier the more exposure you have.

It is learned and made better by practice like most everything else. In particular no matter how smart you are or how good at abstract reasoning that is not remotely enough to get rational ethics down to your core and to build the kind of life you are proud of.

Most definitely, logic must be taught. Logic and the scientific method are relatively recent discoveries. Most of human history has been characterized by superstition, witchcraft and shamanism, all of which developed as a means to control men. They are primitive attempts at philosophy, but they explain very little. Reason is the facility that allows conscious thought and we are born with it if we are not mentally deficient, but it has both proper and improper uses. Reasoning from faulty premises can be as dangerous as acting on pure emotion. Luckily, people living in this age have available all the information they need about logic and the proper use of reason, however these things are not emphasized in most basic educational systems.

I firmly believe that the reason why the majority of human history was characterized by tribalism and savagery is that it was nearly impossible to disseminate the principles of logic to the population. Once these things were discovered and a mechanism to communicate them came into being, mankind advanced in the relatively short time span of a few thousand years after spending millennia in a state no better than animals.

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.

The 'wiring' and 'components' are available for all humans, but all skills (even walking) have to be practiced to reinforce that 'wiring' and mental process. Basic math involves logic and reasoning as does language and nearly any work task.

Some brains come with wiring and components that are more adept at certain processes than are others, but unless there are birth defects or damage to the brain, any can be trained (with cooperation--volition) to a basic level of comprehension and efficacy. But as with any human attribute, the range of function from individual to individual will cover a broad bell curve.

Now here's where I disagree with A.R. All people are not born "tabula raza". Some are born with more inate talent than others and as a result find it easier to accomplish certain things than most people would. However, that doesn't mean that a person can't achieve as much or more than the gifted person. A perfect example would be Mozart and Beethoven, Mozart was born gifted. Music flowed from him like water from a well from an underground sea. Beethoven had to work harder. Evidence of this is the sketches for the 5th symphony where the famous four note phrase was worked over and over until he got it just so. Yet most critics agreed that Beethoven was the equal or even the superior to Mozart. To make a long story longer, dedication and hard work can often equal and even surpass that of the gifted person.

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.

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.

All of those things are a factor. But at the lowest common denominator is having a connection to the mind.
Logic and reason, beyond survival necessities cannot occur in the brain alone. A sense, at least, of the big picture and integrating one's accumulated knowledge can only take place in the mind and experiences over time.

As a part of my philosophy minor as an undergraduate in the late 50s I took a course in Logic which included syllogisms and logical fallacies. These skills are not innate!

I think there are differing factors in play for each person. For me, I had a job where I did service work. I got stuck working graveyard and was on my own to be the service tech for the company until I could move up to a day shift. I was with the company for less than a year, and although I knew the basics of my job, I would have to call my boss for technical help from time to time. After waking up my bosses a few times, and realizing that while they were willing to help me, they weren't too keen on me calling them at 2 am to fix some issues. I made a conscious effort to do whatever I could NOT to call them and started relying on my own instincts and abilities. Before I knew it, it had been a month before I'd have to call... then 2 months... etc. The next thing I know, I'm off of days and start getting sent on the out of town runs because I'm known as the person who can figure things out. As I realized that it was MY choice to be successful or not, I think it caused my self confidence to grow.

As with anything, it starts with a belief in yourself. Being able to say "I can make it work", gets the ball rolling.

http://Despair.com says that "When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do.

That said, the ability to use reason and logic starts with childhood perception. If a child grows up happy and healthy, his perceptions and views of the world follow reality. If not, those realities are distorted and all manner of rationalizations follow to make them "psycho-logical."

One only need think of Obama, who was a love child, first abandoned by his father, then schlepped around the world to live in different cultures before being abandoned to his perceived racist grandparents. Confused and angry, Obama was then an easy mark for Frank Marshall Davis and, later, Marxist professors to convince him that his unhappiness was the fault of the white, colonialist West, so much so that he changed his very name.

Here's an Objectivist take on it - <5 minutes video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whQl_...

Professor Edward de Bono, in his book "de Bono’s Thinking Course," has an excellent example of intelligence and efficient thinking. He says:

The car may have a powerful engine, a smooth gear box and wonderful suspension. But the skill of the driver is something different.

Indeed, the very power of the car may place extra demands upon that skill. In no way does the power of the car ensure the skill of the driver. In the analogy the engineering of the car corresponds to the innate intelligence and the driving skill of the driver corresponds to the operating skill we call thinking.

It is also often the case that a more humble car has a better driver. Driving skill can also be learned and practiced and improved.

Beyond the basics, thinking is a learned skill, like driving or anything else.

I think motivation and perception has a lot to do with reason. I recently watched the first two seasons of Reign. The show was highly overdramatic and I oftentimes found myself screaming "you idiot" and other choice words at the TV. But the more I thought about it the more I realized it was the way things were. They did not know any better. I think our society suffers from a lot of "doing things the way they've always been" "the same old thing", and " business as usual " mentality. Let's face it in just the last 20 years life has changed so drastically that even in an all English speaking neighborhood there are still very heavy communication barriers. Life has changed too much to not have everyone on the same page and I believe those barriers are what is causing a lot of the media provoked lack of reason. So many people rely on media for their education, because let's face it public education has become nothing more than brain washing and propaganda. They have to learn somewhere, mom and Dad are too busy or don't care, and the only place anyone will listen is on the internet, and they are lead by it and Tv. It is terrifying to think where elderly people are going to end up when this generations kids grow up?

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.

Dear Mountain Lady: Using reason to make de-
cisions means focusing on the facts before one.
And that is the root of going by reason. (Specific
processes may come later, as one learns more
about it).

A significant factor in developing a logic-seeking approach to life is inherent emotional disposition. I was a quiet, thoughtful child (which usually meant I was more creative in the trouble I got into), and if what my parents told me made sense, I followed their guidance. My brother, on the other hand, was emotional and volatile, challenging seemingly everything he was told, and remains irrational to this day. My father often jokingly blamed me for suckering him into wanting another child, as I was too easy to rear. I was well and thoughtfully nurtured, but my genetic nature certainly helped my development as a rational being.

Personal discipline is the key. I know several very smart individuals who decided that they were better than everyone and everything else. They dropped out of school and are now stuck in dead-end jobs and still live in their parents basements. Their arrogance became their personal foils. They refused to temper their self-assessments and recognize that talents are important, but application moreso.

I also know a couple of basketball players who weren't the most gifted athletically, yet went on to excel in college (and beyond) because of hard work.

Mental gymnastics are no different than physical gymnastics - and I might even venture harder in fact. It takes personal discipline over a long period of time to gain control over one's passions and emotions. It is certainly made easier by appropriate role models and mentors who can speed the learning process.

If tempted to do something that doesn't make sense, just because it feels better, one needs to
focus on what the rational thing would be. Often
that is no fun; I can't say that I have always done
it. (Particularly on a cold morning when I don't want to get up right away, but I know it has to
be done). But if you focus your mind on having
to get to work, or to that appointment, or that
job application opportunity, you may find your-
self, feeling as if it is against your will but your
body is somehow moving, getting out of bed and
getting started. And, as others are saying, prac-
tice makes it easier.

People act either on blind emotion like animals , OR. they observe what's going on and regulate what they do in response to their goals and the facts of reality