My starting point: Reason IS truth. (Note: I am not saying that reason is true, but that it is inherent to truth itself.)
TLDR: It makes no sense to engage with people unless they have Committed to Making Sense, which cannot be done without reason.
Definition: I am using the word “reason” to mean “the endeavor of ferreting out and removing inconsistencies and contradictions from our thinking”. In other words, continually making sure our embraced thoughts are all consistent with each other.
Why I say this: Not embracing reason means not rejecting inconsistency. This results in admitting two thoughts can’t both be true at the same time and in the same way (or else they would not be contradictory) but accepting them both as true anyways.
But as soon as you do that, as soon as you permit yourself to embrace truly contradictory thoughts, you simultaneously embrace incoherence – literal nonsense.
And as soon as you do that, you lose the standing to criticize anyone else for doing the same. And since you can’t call on anyone else to use reason or make sense, you lose the grounds from which to ask anyone else to consider any of your proofs or justifications either.
It may be obvious to some, but perhaps not to others: The only people who can non-hypocritically offer to engage with other people rationally are those who have fully embraced reason. Reason must therefore be accepted as inherent to making sense of anything, because without reason all you have is inconsistency and nonsense.
So the question is: is a particular person interested in having a rational exchange of views – a rational conversation? Are they interested in hearing the justifications others give for their thoughts, and demonstrating the justifications they themselves give for theirs? Are they interested in being perceived as valuing “making sense” of things as their ultimate goal?
Any person who elects to turn their back on reason in any circumstance cannot do any of this.
There are thus two kinds of conversations to be had: rational conversations and irrational conversations. I am only interested in the former, because irrational conversations are self-defeating rubbish.
This all demonstrates to me that reason is a necessary first axiom to any conversation about anything, let alone truth. Otherwise, I can tell you that I am a fish and you can’t prove me wrong – because if you don’t have to use reason, neither do I.
Reason doesn’t happen to be true – far from it. Reason is a necessary and unavoidable first principle or axiom that must be fully embraced before you can even begin to consider what is true.
This is in my view the difference between a Sleeper and one of the Awakened – the Sleeper doesn’t understand (or refuses to embrace) the compulsory nature of what I wrote above.
So if you object to any of this, we probably will need to resolve your objection(s) – either by you demonstrating my errors, or by me demonstrating that I have not made any – before we can move forward to finding any agreement. Until then we will simply have to continue to agree to disagree.