Reason vs. Sense — What's the Difference?
Difference Between Reason and Sense
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Compare with Definitions
Reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic to seek truth and draw conclusions from new or existing information. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans.
Sense
A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world and responding to stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain receives signals from the senses, which continuously receive information from the environment, interprets these signals, and causes the body to respond, either chemically or physically.) Although traditionally around five human senses were known (namely sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing), it is now recognized that there are many more.
Reason
The basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction
There are good reasons to learn a foreign language. See Usage Notes at because, why.
Sense
A faculty by which the body perceives an external stimulus; one of the faculties of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch
The bear has a keen sense of smell which enables it to hunt at dusk
Reason
A declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or conviction
What reasons did she give for leaving?.
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Sense
A feeling that something is the case
She had the sense of being a political outsider
You can improve your general health and sense of well-being
Reason
A fact or cause that explains why something exists or has occurred
The reason for the building's collapse is unknown.
Sense
A sane and realistic attitude to situations and problems
He earned respect by the good sense he showed at meetings
Reason
(Logic) A premise, usually the minor premise, of an argument.
Sense
A way in which an expression or a situation can be interpreted; a meaning
It is not clear which sense of the word ‘characters’ is intended in this passage
Reason
The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence
"Most of us would like to believe that when we say something is right or wrong, we are using our powers of reason alone" (Carl Zimmer).
Sense
A property (e.g. direction of motion) distinguishing a pair of objects, quantities, effects, etc. which differ only in that each is the reverse of the other
The cord does not become straight, but forms a length of helix in the opposite sense
Reason
The limit of what is reasonable
"It is a curious thing that, when a man hates or loves beyond reason, he is ready to go beyond reason to gratify his feelings" (Rudyard Kipling).
Sense
Perceive by a sense or senses
With the first frost, they could sense a change in the days
Reason
A normal mental state; sanity
He has lost his reason.
Sense
(of a machine or similar device) detect
An optical fibre senses a current flowing in a conductor
Reason
To determine or conclude by logical thinking
The doctor reasoned that the patient had a virus.
Sense
Any of the faculties by which stimuli from outside or inside the body are received and felt, as the faculties of hearing, sight, smell, touch, taste, and equilibrium.
Reason
To persuade or dissuade (someone) with reasons
"You boast ... of having reasoned him out of his absurd romance" (William Makepeace Thackeray).
Sense
A perception or feeling produced by a stimulus; sensation
A sense of fatigue and hunger.
Reason
To use the faculty of reason; think logically
What would lead you to reason so?.
Sense
Senses The faculties of sensation as means of providing physical gratification and pleasure.
Reason
To talk or argue logically and persuasively
Tried to reason with her son to eat a good breakfast.
Sense
An intuitive or acquired perception or ability to estimate
A sense of diplomatic timing.
Reason
(Obsolete) To engage in conversation or discussion.
Sense
A capacity to appreciate or understand
A keen sense of humor.
Reason
A cause:
Sense
A vague feeling or presentiment
A sense of impending doom.
Reason
That which causes something: an efficient cause, a proximate cause.
The reason this tree fell is that it had rotted.
Sense
Recognition or perception either through the senses or through the intellect; consciousness
Has no sense of shame.
Reason
A motive for an action or a determination.
The reason I robbed the bank was that I needed the money.
If you don't give me a reason to go with you, I won't.
Sense
Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters
The boy had sense and knew just what to do when he got lost.
Reason
An excuse: a thought or a consideration offered in support of a determination or an opinion; that which is offered or accepted as an explanation.
Sense
Often senses The normal ability to think or reason soundly
Have you taken leave of your senses?.
Reason
(logic) A premise placed after its conclusion.
Sense
Something sound or reasonable
There's no sense in waiting three hours.
Reason
(uncountable) Rational thinking (or the capacity for it); the cognitive faculties, collectively, of conception, judgment, deduction and intuition.
Mankind should develop reason above all other virtues.
Sense
A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification
The sense of the criticism is that the proposal has certain risks.
Reason
(obsolete) Something reasonable, in accordance with thought; justice.
Sense
One of the meanings of a word or phrase
The word set has many senses.
Reason
Ratio; proportion.
Sense
Judgment; consensus
Sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment.
Reason
(intransitive) To deduce or come to a conclusion by being rational
Sense
Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group
I came away from the meeting with the sense that we had resolved all outstanding issues.
Reason
(intransitive) To perform a process of deduction or of induction, in order to convince or to confute; to argue.
Sense
To become aware of; perceive
Organisms able to sense their surroundings.
Reason
To converse; to compare opinions.
Sense
To grasp; understand
Sensed that the financial situation would improve.
Reason
(ambitransitive) To arrange and present the reasons for or against; to examine or discuss by arguments; to debate or discuss.
I reasoned the matter with my friend.
Sense
To detect automatically
Sense radioactivity.
Reason
To support with reasons, as a request.
Sense
(Genetics) Of or relating to the portion of the strand of double-stranded DNA that serves as a template for and is transcribed into RNA.
Reason
(transitive) To persuade by reasoning or argument.
To reason one into a belief; to reason one out of his plan
Sense
Any of the manners by which living beings perceive the physical world: for humans sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste.
Reason
To overcome or conquer by adducing reasons.
To reason down a passion
Sense
Perception through the intellect; apprehension; awareness.
A sense of security
Reason
To find by logical process; to explain or justify by reason or argument.
To reason out the causes of the librations of the moon
Sense
Sound practical or moral judgment.
It's common sense not to put metal objects in a microwave oven.
Reason
A thought or a consideration offered in support of a determination or an opinion; a just ground for a conclusion or an action; that which is offered or accepted as an explanation; the efficient cause of an occurrence or a phenomenon; a motive for an action or a determination; proof, more or less decisive, for an opinion or a conclusion; principle; efficient cause; final cause; ground of argument.
I'll give him reasons for it.
The reason of the motion of the balance in a wheel watch is by the motion of the next wheel.
This reason did the ancient fathers render, why the church was called "catholic."
Virtue and vice are not arbitrary things; but there is a natural and eternal reason for that goodness and virtue, and against vice and wickedness.
Sense
The meaning, reason, or value of something.
You don’t make any sense.
Reason
The faculty or capacity of the human mind by which it is distinguished from the intelligence of the inferior animals; the higher as distinguished from the lower cognitive faculties, sense, imagination, and memory, and in contrast to the feelings and desires. Reason comprises conception, judgment, reasoning, and the intuitional faculty. Specifically, it is the intuitional faculty, or the faculty of first truths, as distinguished from the understanding, which is called the discursive or ratiocinative faculty.
We have no other faculties of perceiving or knowing anything divine or human, but by our five senses and our reason.
In common and popular discourse, reason denotes that power by which we distinguish truth from falsehood, and right from wrong, and by which we are enabled to combine means for the attainment of particular ends.
Reason is used sometimes to express the whole of those powers which elevate man above the brutes, and constitute his rational nature, more especially, perhaps, his intellectual powers; sometimes to express the power of deduction or argumentation.
By the pure reason I mean the power by which we become possessed of principles.
The sense perceives; the understanding, in its own peculiar operation, conceives; the reason, or rationalized understanding, comprehends.
Sense
Any particular meaning of a word, among its various meanings.
Word sense disambiguation
The true sense of words or phrases
Reason
Due exercise of the reasoning faculty; accordance with, or that which is accordant with and ratified by, the mind rightly exercised; right intellectual judgment; clear and fair deductions from true principles; that which is dictated or supported by the common sense of mankind; right conduct; right; propriety; justice.
I was promised, on a time,To have reason for my rhyme.
But law in a free nation hath been ever public reason; the enacted reason of a parliament, which he denying to enact, denies to govern us by that which ought to be our law; interposing his own private reason, which to us is no law.
The most probable way of bringing France to reason would be by the making an attempt on the Spanish West Indies.
Sense
A natural appreciation or ability.
A keen musical sense
Reason
Ratio; proportion.
When anything is proved by as good arguments as a thing of that kind is capable of, we ought not, in reason, to doubt of its existence.
Yet it were great reason, that those that have children should have greatest care of future times.
Sense
(pragmatics) The way that a referent is presented.
Reason
To exercise the rational faculty; to deduce inferences from premises; to perform the process of deduction or of induction; to ratiocinate; to reach conclusions by a systematic comparison of facts.
Sense
(semantics) A single conventional use of a word; one of the entries for a word in a dictionary.
The word set has various senses.
Reason
Hence: To carry on a process of deduction or of induction, in order to convince or to confute; to formulate and set forth propositions and the inferences from them; to argue.
Stand still, that I may reason with you, before the Lord, of all the righteous acts of the Lord.
Sense
(mathematics) One of two opposite directions in which a vector (especially of motion) may point. See also polarity.
Reason
To converse; to compare opinions.
Sense
(mathematics) One of two opposite directions of rotation, clockwise versus anti-clockwise.
Reason
To arrange and present the reasons for or against; to examine or discuss by arguments; to debate or discuss; as, I reasoned the matter with my friend.
When they are clearly discovered, well digested, and well reasoned in every part, there is beauty in such a theory.
Sense
(biochemistry) referring to the strand of a nucleic acid that directly specifies the product.
Reason
To support with reasons, as a request.
Sense
To use biological senses: to either see, hear, smell, taste, or feel.
Reason
To persuade by reasoning or argument; as, to reason one into a belief; to reason one out of his plan.
Men that will not be reasoned into their senses.
Sense
To instinctively be aware.
She immediately sensed her disdain.
Reason
To overcome or conquer by adducing reasons; - with down; as, to reason down a passion.
Sense
To comprehend.
Reason
To find by logical processes; to explain or justify by reason or argument; - usually with out; as, to reason out the causes of the librations of the moon.
Sense
A faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving external objects by means of impressions made upon certain organs (sensory or sense organs) of the body, or of perceiving changes in the condition of the body; as, the senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. See Muscular sense, under Muscular, and Temperature sense, under Temperature.
Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep.
What surmounts the reachOf human sense I shall delineate.
The traitor Sense recallsThe soaring soul from rest.
Reason
A rational motive for a belief or action;
The reason that war was declared
The grounds for their declaration
Sense
Perception by the sensory organs of the body; sensation; sensibility; feeling.
In a living creature, though never so great, the sense and the affects of any one part of the body instantly make a transcursion through the whole.
Reason
An explanation of the cause of some phenomenon;
The reason a steady state was never reached was that the back pressure built up too slowly
Sense
Perception through the intellect; apprehension; recognition; understanding; discernment; appreciation.
This Basilius, having the quick sense of a lover.
High disdain from sense of injured merit.
Reason
The capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination;
We are told that man is endowed with reason and capable of distinguishing good from evil
Sense
Sound perception and reasoning; correct judgment; good mental capacity; understanding; also, that which is sound, true, or reasonable; rational meaning.
He raves; his words are looseAs heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense.
Reason
The state of having good sense and sound judgment;
His rationality may have been impaired
He had to rely less on reason than on rousing their emotions
Sense
That which is felt or is held as a sentiment, view, or opinion; judgment; notion; opinion.
I speak my private but impartial senseWith freedom.
The municipal council of the city had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens.
Reason
A justification for something existing or happening;
He had no cause to complain
They had good reason to rejoice
Sense
Meaning; import; signification; as, the true sense of words or phrases; the sense of a remark.
So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense.
I think 't was in another sense.
Reason
A fact that logically justifies some premise or conclusion;
There is reason to believe he is lying
Sense
Moral perception or appreciation.
Some are so hardened in wickedness as to have no sense of the most friendly offices.
Reason
Decide by reasoning; draw or come to a conclusion;
We reasoned that it was cheaper to rent than to buy a house
Sense
One of two opposite directions in which a line, surface, or volume, may be supposed to be described by the motion of a point, line, or surface.
Reason
Present reasons and arguments
Sense
To perceive by the senses; to recognize.
Is he sure that objects are not otherwise sensed by others than they are by him?
Reason
Think logically;
The children must learn to reason
Sense
A general conscious awareness;
A sense of security
A sense of happiness
A sense of danger
A sense of self
Sense
The meaning of a word or expression; the way in which a word or expression or situation can be interpreted;
The dictionary gave several senses for the word
In the best sense charity is really a duty
The signifier is linked to the signified
Sense
The faculty through which the external world is apprehended;
In the dark he had to depend on touch and on his senses of smell and hearing
Sense
Sound practical judgment;
I can't see the sense in doing it now
He hasn't got the sense God gave little green apples
Fortunately she had the good sense to run away
Sense
A natural appreciation or ability;
A keen musical sense
A good sense of timing
Sense
Perceive by a physical sensation, e.g., coming from the skin or muscles;
He felt the wind
She felt an object brushing her arm
He felt his flesh crawl
She felt the heat when she got out of the car
Sense
Detect some circumstance or entity automatically;
This robot can sense the presence of people in the room
Particle detectors sense ionization
Sense
Become aware of not through the senses but instinctively;
I sense his hostility
Sense
Comprehend;
I sensed the real meaning of his letter
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