1.1.2 Rationality and Its Limits

Version 1.3 March 2013                                (Previous Version)

We look at each of these issues and phrase our current summary conclusions on rationality like this:

1.1.2.1 How to be Rational

Many people don't really know what “being rational� means.  Here is the accepted definition:

It is irrational to ignore new evidence, a different analysis, or a potential new insight. 

It isn't irrational to continue to hold the same view, to not change your mind.  The new point may not be persuasive.  Nothing within rationalism says that under certain circumstances we must change our minds, because we can't say in general terms what the impact of a new point will be.

We are being totally rational if we list all the reasons for deciding one way and all the reasons for deciding another way, then make up our minds.  We add reasons to the lists on one side or the other if they might help to change the decision.  But then what process occurs to tip the balance one way or the other?  And once we have made up our minds, someone can always ask, ‘but why did you decide that way?’  If we can state the reason then it should be added to one of the lists and we can decide again.  If we cannot state the reason then the decision was not completely rational and involves some irrational component.  All rational decisions are like this.  We are being rational if we follow this process to the best of our ability, but the ultimate decision is not itself rational.

For instance, I can make a rational decision to drink a cup of coffee and adduce my reasons:

Reasons For Drinking Coffee	Reasons Against Drinking Coffee
I am thirsty.	I’m not desperate for a drink yet.
Coffee quenches thirst.	Water is better for me.
I like coffee.
Coffee is in the pot.

I am being “rational� about this if a new point comes to mind that may make me not drink coffee.  For instance:

Coffee is in the pot.

The pot is cold.  I don't like cold coffee.

Of course, I could decide to drink the cold coffee anyway.  But my decision is rational.  It seems fairly obvious that we should be as rational as we can about all issues.

1.1.2.2 Emotion and Reason

Some people suggest that being rational requires you to ignore all emotions.  This is wrong.

Emotions are the stuff of life.  Emotions are what impel us to act: they provide the drive to live and to love.  Our emotions lead us to desire some things and to dislike others.  We use reason, being rational, to more effectively obtain what we desire and avoid what we dislike. 

·       Being completely rational, after we have listed all the pros and cons on any issue, we still have to decide, and making that decision is as emotional as it is rational.  Rationalists hate this idea!

·       It would be silly to exclude emotions from our considerations: if we want to, for instance,  promote love and control anger then we need to think about these emotions rationally.  Rationalists can agree with this!

There is no point thinking about anything at all unless there is some passion involved: why bother if you don’t care?  Emotion provides the motivation for being rational. 

·       We can't leave emotions out of the equation.  If we know 2 + 2 = 4, we feel it.  It is impossible to be purely rational or to base every decision on reason alone. 

·       It is completely rational for us to give “I like coffeeâ€� as a reason for drinking coffee.  Our likes and dislikes are based on emotional responses and our feelings about them.

·       If we are wondering whether to marry someone, and we are analysing this rationally (as we should but sometimes don’t) then we must consider reasons such as “I love this personâ€�, “I would be emotionally distraught if I could not see this person againâ€� and “I’m very physically attracted to this personâ€�.  To ignore such emotions would be stupid, not rational.

·       If we could truthfully say “I hate this personâ€� that is a good reason for NOT marrying them.

Although we must take emotions into account when making a rational decision we may take other less obviously emotional issues into account as well.  Ultimately many of these relate to deferred rewards or more complex desires.

·       It is rational for us to give “I don't like cold coffeeâ€� as a reason for NOT drinking coffee, especially if the coffee is actually cold: this is an emotional response.  It is also rational to say “Water is better for meâ€�, which relates to the deferred benefit of long term health, which I also desire.  I may give as reasons for not drinking coffee that “the production of this coffee exploited the farmers  who grew the coffee beans and I don't support commercial exploitationâ€�.  This may be ultimately linked to my emotional response to injustice.

·       We may also be able to suggest rational reasons not to marry someone we are attracted to.  “The overwhelming feeling of being ‘in love’ will pass in time.â€�  “This person is happily married: breaking up that marriage will cause too much hurtâ€�.  Obviously we should take such facts into account, if they are true, because emotions matter.

Sometimes, in critical situations, if we allow our feelings to overwhelm us, we don't think clearly and may act inappropriately, risking life or property or reputation, so at times we need to “control our emotions and think rationally� about our wider or long term interests. 

·       In a military or police action, we may be attacked, colleagues may be injured or killed, and we may be horrified at what is happening and extremely scared.  We all differ in how would react.  Many who have experienced such situations report that they tried to be as calm as possible, to suppress their feelings, to focus on their training for this situation, to do what they had to do.

·       Sportspeople in a final, in front of a home crowd, can be overwhelmed by emotion.  Part of the winning strategy is to control or feed off these feelings, imagining how to win, mentally rehearsing the steps, focussing on the tasks, making this the centre of the emotional reality.

·       A more trivial but more common example is when we have suddenly become embarrassed in a social situation.  If we react emotionally, unthinkingly, we may make matters worse.  It is better to quell the emotional response and respond more ‘rationally’: perhaps we should laugh with the crowd at ourselves, if it was funny, or apologise, if it wasn’t.

Sometimes an emotional response may be so compelling that it overrides all other reasons.

·       We may say “Despite all their faults, I love this person so much I will marry them anywayâ€�. 

If we acknowledge their faults then we are still being rational: we have just accepted one of the reasons – our overwhelming love – as the decider.  And who can say we shouldn’t? 

If we deny the faults are real, we may be fooling ourselves – or we may be a better judge of character than those who see the faults.  Perhaps we should look at the evidence a bit more. 

If we don't even want to consider the faults that others can see, then we are being irrational.

·       It often happens that we see a person in imminent danger, and with no further thought we immediately take whatever action is required to save them.  Parents dive into crashing waves to rescue their drowning children.  Strangers walking by a burning house can rush in to rescue the occupants.  These are common emotional responses that override other considerations.  Are they therefore irrational? 

Often the rescuers are injured.  Sometimes the parents drown while the children they were trying to help save themselves.  The strangers are often burnt themselves as they drag people to safety.  But when asked afterwards, most rescuers say they would do it again if they had to.  Given the opportunity to more calmly weigh up the potential risks as well as the potential gains, that is, in a more rational frame of mind, they decide their emotional reaction was right.

Sometimes it is good to let ourselves be overwhelmed with emotion, when it is safe to do so.

·       For many of us surrendering to an emotional response to music is the closest to heaven we get.

·       Surrendering to the desire when making love can penetrate our minds as well as our bodies.

·       Many of us – younger men especially – are thrill seekers – mountain climbing, caving, skiing.  Some find chess thrilling.  Many of us crave physical challenges – an emotional hit. 

It is rational to seek this and value it, provided we openly take into account the risks.

·       Many of us have an emotional reaction to intellectual stimulation and enlightenment.

Learning something significant that helps us understand the world and our place within it can be thrilling – sometimes better than sex, at least for some of us.

In our personal development, many times many of us need to have an emotional response to a situation before we gain any insight from it.

·       If we are bullying someone, we may need to feel what it is like to be bullied, or to be able to empathise with the other person, before we choose to stop bullying.

·       If we are depressed, we may feel as though we have hit rock bottom before we wearily, anxiously, begrudgingly or angrily start doing the things we need to improve our situation.

·       Leadership training courses often put their participants into an apparently threatening situation (jumping from a height, to be caught by the others)

So emotional reactions are not necessarily irrational.  Many emotional reactions are extremely pleasant or highly laudable.  A strong emotional response may be what decides how we react even after rational consideration.  We may discover in hindsight that some emotionally driven reactions, when we ignored or denied the countervailing reasons, were irrational.  Emotional reactions can lead to insights that change our behaviour.

We might in the end even have an emotional attachment to being rational, because it enables us to make better decisions more often, saving us pain and regret and providing so much pleasure.

1.1.2.3 Limits of Rationality

The major problem with being rational is that it does not tell us how we should decide one way or the other.  If the coffee is cold, I may or may not choose to drink it. 

If we are inclined to choose a certain way, we can always ask ourselves why we prefer that way.  If we can give an answer, then we can add that reason to one side or the other, for or against.  We can repeat this exercise until we can't add any more pros and cons.  Then on what basis do we decide?  Rationality doesn’t address the ultimate choice.

Gödel’s insight doesn’t show that reason is useless, only that it cannot solve every problem. 

The implication is that it is likely that no coherent system of thought can justify itself.  If we had a “complete system to determine what is true� how could we establish that the system itself is true?  If we used the system itself it would be a circular argument.  If we used some other justification then by definition the system would not be complete.  We don’t have any way out of this dilemma.

·       In practice, on day to day issues, this dilemma is not a major concern.  As we go through this process we may discover that most of us agree on many issues, well before we get to the end of the process when we run out of relevant new points to make to make. 

·       It is silly to be irrational – to decide one way when the bulk of the evidence does the other way.

But an appeal to reason or to rationality doesn’t always provide an exhaustive method of resolving a debate.  In at least some cases, in the ultimate, when we have listed all the reasons pro and con, we need to decide, and the decision, is, by definition in these cases, not rational.

Some theists acknowledge that their belief in God is not rationally justifiable, so they accept truth as a core value but don't always include being rational as an inevitable part of valuing the truth. 

We say that being irrational is probably always wrong, but we cannot rationally justify everything we believe or value: sometimes a choice is rational – consistent with reality – but sometimes it's not compelling – nothing proves that we should make the choice, we just do.

Nevertheless, we say that the position we present in these pages is fully rational because it fits the classical definition of being rational, as presented in 1.1.2.1:

We are being rational if:

there is a possibility that

if someone brought up some point we had not considered on an issue

then we might change our minds about that issue.