Topics Rationality

Question Can "reason" or "rationality" ever truly be the final explanation or justification for any action or decision? Don't all decisions and choices need some kind of "irrational" foundation (curiosity, love, boredom, fear, indifference, excitement, desire to do something) in order for a choice to be made?

Accepted:
October 19, 2010

Comments

What on earth is irrational about being curious about the current state of play in the foundations of quantum mechanics, about loving your beautiful, clever, affectionate daughter, about being bored by mindless chatter about C-list celebrities, about feeling fear when an errant car suddenly hurtles into your path, about being indifferent when picking one from a shelf of ten identical and equally conveniently placed packets of cereal in the supermarket, about being excited at the prospect of going to New York for the first time, about wanting to return to Venice?

None of these strike me as in the slightest bit irrational! Rather they seem entirely rational and reasonable responses in any normal sense of 'rational' (indeed, it would be pretty unreasonable not to have most of them). So the original question seems misplaced in so far as it presupposes that such responses must indeed be "irrational".

Perhaps though the point behind the question is this. If you use "reason" to refer just to our abilities to make inferential moves -- say, to deduce one proposition from another or e.g. to make inferences to the best explanation -- then reason-qua-ability by itself won't get you to act (it won't even get you to do deductions -- you've got to want to do them to get started!). So, to be sure, it takes more than reason (meaning an ability to make inferential moves) to get you to act: so it can't be the whole explanation of any particular act that you have that ability. Something else is required. But, as the suggested examples show, that doesn't mean that the sorts of something else that might be involved (including cases of curiosity, love, and the rest) are irrational. There's more to being a rational person, in the ordinary sense, than just being able to make correct inferential moves: a psychotic madman might be able to do that.