the reasonable person

the reasonable person -- the one who acts in accordance with reason in life as well as in their academic or other profession -- is the one who governs his or her beliefs and assertions by insight into truth and logical relations. in particular, they are not mastered by how they want things to be, by the beliefs they happen to have, or by styles or currents of thought and action around them. if they advance claims as true or justified they do so on a basis of such insight, and are very careful to be sure that that basis is really there. the difficulty of securing such a basis will make any reasonable person quite humble in their claims and willing (indeed, happy, even solicitous) to be corrected when they are mistaken. thus the reasonable person is not close-minded or dogmatic, or insistent on having their own way, but just the opposite. and that attitude is, indeed, based upon insight into the truth about the nature of scholarly or intellectual work itself. positively, of course, the reasonable person will be devoted to method for determining truth and the soundness of reasoning, and will carefully observe such methods. they will be conscious and explicit about moving beyond such methods if that is, for some reason, unavoidable in their practice and statements. life sometimes pushes us beyond where evidence reaches.

Dallas Willard in "How Reason Can Survive the Modern University"