In regards to “rational” getting a bad-rep, see this article for an anecdotal data point:
My view; the title carries the connotation that there are problems with rational thinking, and then the body of the article merely states how human beings are not always perfectly rational.
The latter observation is obvious to me, and studying how people wield their rational capacity (e.g., heuristics and biases) seems like a worthwhile effort. But I don’t see how the article’s title follows from that.
We’re not perfectly skilled at rescueing starving children either, but few people would title an article:
But contrary to the lives of children, the debate on reason has’t settled yet. We shouldn’t let failures of our rational faculty justify anything, certainly not a claim that rationality itself is bad. So far, it’s the mechanism to reason about reality, with unsurpassed effectiveness.
And, in fact, I might argue that most things in day-to-day life can be understood rationally.
For example, with something like love, I don’t think you have to boil it down to an objective measure. But I think you can postulate a human emotion called love, and strive to understand it using rationality.
You can even anticipate certain things about it.
Most of the “irrational” things about love are perfectly predictable, and that, to me, means that they should be entirely comprehensible to a rational being, even if they cannot be derived from a set of axioms which does not include love itself.
I don’t think many people argue that you’d have to boil it down to an objective measure. Even those who might probably don’t have it at the top of their priority list.
However, a great many people that I respect will argue that when a person’s quality of life suffers because of his or her inability to love or be loved to the degree that he or she desires, that the most effective mechanism for solving this problem, is through sound application of rational principles.
Certainly more effective than waiting until some newspaper’s astrology prediction aligns with the sacred crystals I hide under my pillow.
Totally, exactly what I’m thinking. The thing is, rational principles can be applied to understand a huge range of things.
And to solve a wide variety of problems.
The astrology example is good, actually, because astrology itself is something which, offhand at least, seems to be completely irrational.
However, that people follow astrology is not at all irrational.
Because if you know one or two things about people, I think you could foresee that they would follow something like that.
But surely we shouldn’t confuse the social phenomenon with the indivual’s beliefs.
They’re related somehow, but one is not a justification for the other.
A lot of people believe X. There’s an evolutionary principle that plausibly explains the desire to belief X. Therefore it is okay to belief X…?
That kind of reasoning is used to justify so many apalling behavior.
See, this is why I like you.
I think we can understand the desire to believe X, but it doesn’t imply that X is a good way to understand things.
Doesn’t mean it’s okay to do it that way, but we can certainly foresee that someone might.
Exactly, myself included; I’m certainly not immune to it.
But I make a modest effort to recognize a general principle, and I’m willing to admit past mistakes, and then change my future behaviour, or submit to my evolutionary weakness in all honesty (like the fact that I just drank a sugar-loaded can of soda-pop).