Video games cause violent behavior. Is that an example of a baseless speculation or is it a reasonable but vaguely founded idea? It seems somewhat plausible but its plausibility seems kind of vague so I can kind of sympathize with the ultra-logical "Reason Magazine" types dismissing it out of hand. On the other hand that kind of dismissal which says that if you can't think of a definite reason for an opinion then it's wrong seems kind of glib, because their does seem to be something to it. After all as general psychological rule we tend to think that encouraging a behavior leads to a behavior and some people might see imaginary violence as a form of encouragement.... but it really does seem like a kind of reasoning that lies somewhere between gut instinct and reason doesn't it? I guess my question is really more epistemological than directly pertaining to the question of whether or not images cause violence. Is this simply a case of balancing human social instinct over pure reasoning or is there a more philosophically disconcerting implication here about the very nature of reason? Are there case in the hard sciences where similar "instinctive" ways of thinking get blurred in with more easily justified ways of thinking?