Proposal for ‘Continuing Commentary’ on the L. Jonathan Cohen
symposium, 'Can Human Irrationality Be Experimentally Demonstrated?',
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4:317-70, 6:487-583, 7:735-38,
10:311-13.
Doubts about “the standard picture”
If one assumes, as I do (2006), that feelings of worthlessness are a
maladaptive byproduct of the evolution of rationality, then it
seems to follow that what Edward Stein (1996) has referred to
as “the standard picture” of rationality is mistaken -- that ‘being
rational’ is not so much a matter of slavishly conforming to established
rules of inference as a matter of ‘being able to “see” what is going
on’ as a result of “reasoning” (ampliative inference) that has already
transpired, whether one’s own or culturally acquired.(1) Accordingly,
I assume our common sense rationality *****sments can reasonably be
construed as appraisals of a mental map of sorts -- one comprised of
both beliefs and values -- in which the cognitive component of this
"seeing" correlates with the extent to which the map is comprised of
beliefs that accurately and coherently represent reality including,
among many other things, beliefs about how to acquire beliefs that
accurately and coherently represent reality (reflected in how well
one "reasons").
Compatible with the foregoing and its implication that rationality is
a matter of degree, I also assume that when we refer to an individual
as "rational" or "irrational" that we are simply expressing a rough
appraisal of how this individual's mental map compares to the norm and
that the failure to appreciate this quirk in our ordinary use of words
has led to a certain amount of confusion. For this reason, I do not
construe experimental evidence that humans routinely violate
established rules of inference (e.g., Kahneman and Tversky, 1974) as
evidence that humans are irrational (e.g., Nisbett and Borgida, 1976;
Slovic, Fischhoff and Lichtenstein, 1976; etc.), but rather as evidence
that expert opinion might be relatively more rational than the norm (in
terms of ‘being able to “see” what is going on’) where such matters are
concerned in much the manner some might argue that expert opinion has
been relatively less rational than the norm with regard to its
longstanding love affair with “the standard picture”.(2)
[quote]
One of the slipperiest terms in the philosophical lexicon, 'rationality'
is many things to many people (Alvin Plantinga).
[unquote]
Footnotes
1. For a compatible perspective based, not on empirical considerations,
but rather on the limitations of formal systems, see Brilmayer (1983).
2. As is so often the case, I suspect the lover in question may have
been blinded by lust, on this occasion, the lust to reduce mind to
matter via the reduction of rationality to logic/computation/rules/
principles, etc. (mechanistic materialism).
References
1. Brilmayer, Lea (1983) 'Discrepancies between human behavior and
formal theories of rationality: The incompleteness of Bayesian
probability logic'. Behavioral and Brain Science 6:488-9.
2. Nisbett, Richard and Borgida, Eugene (1976), ‘Attribution and the
Psychology of Prediction’, Journal of Personal and Social Psychology,
32, p. 935).
3. Roberts, Jr., Phil (2006), ‘Rationology 101’, presented
before the International Society for Human Ethology, Wayne State
University, 2006 and the International Society for Theoretical
Psychology, York University, 2007. Available at www.rationology.net
4. Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruck and Lichtenstein, Sarah (1976),
‘Cognitive Processes and Societal Risk Taking’, in Carroll and Payne,
1976.
5. Stein, Edward (1996), Without Good Reason: The Rationality Debate in
Philosophy and Cognitive Science.
6. Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. (1974), ‘Judgment Under Uncertainty:
Heuristics and Biases, Science 185, 1124-31.
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