Reason has become instrumental to point where, somewhat like computers, human's can pick up threads of rational arguments, recombine them without thinking through what they are doing. Today reason is solely a means to an end where the only difference between ends lies in probability of outcome.

Objective reasoning is dead, as some might say the light went out.

Narrow rationality leads to bad results, such as when someone is focused purely on his or her own narrow perspective, their own very specific wants, needs, emotions. A wider rationality considers others' perspectives, others' wants, needs, and emotions.

I can't see how rationality leads to evil deeds, even some times. Name one evil deed which was the result of rational thought? I know some people have claimed that they have perfectly good reasons for mass murder, or human trafficking or what have you, but the reasons they have are always poor arguments. So it isn't then Rationality that is flawed, it is an evil man with poor arguments that is flawed.

Best,
PA

Rationality is light, — TheMadFool

What you need here is a dose of Hume. Reason, logic, measurement, the whole of rationality is the servant of passion. Rationality can tell you what to do, if you want something; it cannot tell you what to want.

The way I see it rationality lives in the world of thought and is king of that world. But the whole world of thought is the servant of the passions which are what moves one in the world of things. Thus the moral neutrality and the lightness of rationality are simply the way it is. Many, many are those who pretend that rationality can dictate their actions, and all of them are mistaken. It can only guide action once the goal has been established. If you want to build an atomic bomb, make these calculations build this equipment, accumulate tis material construct it thus and so. But is it a good idea to build an atomic bomb? Reason is silent until you set some goal or other, and then and only then reason can recommend a bomb or no bomb, in the service of that passion.

There's a very simple answer to your dilemma: there exists both good and bad reasoning, and the fact that it is possible to reason badly does not provide justification for rejecting reasoning altogether, any more than the fact that there can be bad apples could be reason to stop eating them altogether. What are you doing in your OP if not reasoning?

What do you think? Is this the only flaw in rationality? Does rationality have other shortcomings? — TheMadFool

You are blaming the vehicle, when you ought to be focusing on the driver. If you decide to drive off a cliff it is not the fault of the vehicle.
A computer is wholly rational. Programers have a phrase bullshit in; bullshit out.
If you make an assumption that the Aryan race is superior and ought to rule the world, then it is a short step to rationalise that other races should be exterminated.
If you assume that disease is bad, then it is rational to fund research to find a cure.

If you now reflect on your own post. It is perfectly rational, in that you have taken rational steps at each step along the way. It is also rational to ask others for their input. When you have reasonable and various ideas, you can make a choice based on your personal position and motivation. But if you end up with rubbish it is not because of rationality , but because of how you FEEL about the information.
Hume was good on all this, insisting that it was the "passions" that we are ruled by.

The problem is not so much with rationality itself as with the set of presuppositions--i.e., the worldview--that serves as the starting point for any individual process of reasoning undertaken by a person or group of people. Deductive logic, just like a computer, conforms to the law of "garbage in, garbage out." A perfectly valid deductive argument that has even one false premise produces a false conclusion. I often say that the most valuable service the discipline of philosophy can provide is helping us recognize and critically evaluate our own presuppositions/worldview, which is no easy task.

You have to think about things to make definite choices. So rationality is just about exploring the right way to achieve some goal.

The good and evil are how we tend to describe people's value systems - their general motivations. The goals they would be generally wanting to achieve.

The two come together because we can rationalise about good and evil. We can discuss a choice of views about the status of values.

Are good and evil moral absolutes or essentially meaningless human constructs? Or somewhere inbetween?

Of course, taking a natural philosophy perspective, I would seek the evolutionary optimality of "good vs evil". I would rationalise it as a natural and complementary opposition between competitive and co-operative social behaviour.

So that seems the most rational view of human intentionality in general.

But anyway, your OP confuses these two levels of questioning. Whatever our intentions or goals, it is thinking that fleshes out the possible courses of action. But then, metaphysically, if we want to ask about what are the "right" goals, then the conversation has to turn to what are the choices there, and what choice best fits the available evidence.

I have no idea what it means to think rationally. I'm quite sure, as with everything else in life, one's rational thinking is someone else's irrational.

In any case, all that brings meaning to life is about feeling, not thinking, so it is if no matter what rational thinking may or may not be.

Generally, I think this is true. Freud put it this way: "We are not masters of our own houses." As Un noted above (per Hume, rationality is the servant of the passions.

I know some people have claimed that they have perfectly good reasons for mass murder, or human trafficking or what have you, but the reasons they have are always poor arguments. — PossibleAaran

One can certainly build a rational foundation for mass murder, mass sterilization, etc. either prescriptively or retroactively. If, for instance, one understood that people with heritable diseases, a rational program could be devised to make sure they did not pass those abnormal genes on. They could be executed or sterilized.

IF one thought that the very nature of Jewishness, racially and religiously, was to practice ethics inimical to the interests of the German people, and IF one thought that communism was a natural outcome of Jewish ethics (communism also being inimical to the interests of the German people), or IF one thought that Jews were inherently racially inferior, THEN it would be rational to just kill them all.

The National Socialists of Germany went about murdering the Jews in a very well organized and rational manner.

There were physicists who were quite certain that developing an atomic bomb was most definitely a bad idea, not because 1 bomb would destroy the world, but because no one would ever stop with 1 bomb: Whoever could build atomic bombs would make sure they had as many as might be needed. Which, as it happens, is the way things worked out.

You might say, "well! Those are all bad arguments for doing anything. Sure, those are bad arguments, but people are flawed and bad arguments are good enough.

"Rationality is relative: if one accepts a model in which benefitting oneself is optimal, then rationality is equated with behavior that is self-interested to the point of being selfish; whereas if one accepts a model in which benefiting the group is optimal, then purely selfish behavior is deemed irrational. It is thus meaningless to assert rationality without also specifying the background model assumptions describing how the problem is framed and formulated." -- Wikipedia: Rationality

Rationality is light, supposedly. It is associated with enlightement, wisdom, philosophy, science, blah blah blah. To find fault in rationality is simply impossible. You would have to be either mad or a fool or both to even think of painting rationality in a negative light. — TheMadFool

Which rationality?

Rationality is light, supposedly. It is associated with enlightement, wisdom, philosophy, science, blah blah blah. To find fault in rationality is simply impossible. You would have to be either mad or a fool or both to even think of painting rationality in a negative light.

However, there's this small thing that's been nagging me for some time. Every evil deed that has ever been committed has been done under the aegis of rationality. There's always a perfectly good ''reason'' to insult someone or hit someone ir even to kill him/her. — TheMadFool

It's interesting you say this, because this is something Levinas spends a lot of time discussing. Levinas interprets the history of western philosophy as being "egology", where the desire is to know things, for things to reveal themselves (similarly to what you said: knowledge is light). Ultimately everything is put under the totality of Same-ness, me-ness, for-me, etc. It is directed outwards, but comes from inside. This totality is hostile to anything not of itself. Violence, murder, genocide, all of these are enabled by a lack of recognition of the Other, or the decision to destroy it.

But there's trickles of alterity in the history as well. Descartes' argument for the existence of God by appealing to the concept of the infinite, philosophical discussions of death (the impossibility of possibility) and the erotic are not of the Same. More chiefly is the Other, and its trace, in which we encounter without understanding and which forms the primordial basis for ethics.

When it comes to ethics, then, I think something could be said about how we approach other people and the world at large plays a large part in how we fare as human beings in general. Do we see people as instruments to be used, abused and discarded after their utility is exhausted, or do we respect them, give them distance, yet be prepared to help them when necessary? Do we take more than we give? Do we spit words at people, or do we let our language be one of many ways of gift-giving?

What do you think? Is this the only flaw in rationality? Does rationality have other shortcomings? — TheMadFool

I don't know if rationality itself is responsible for moral corruption. Surely Kant thought morality was grounded in rationality, and that someone not acting morally was not acting fully rationally, even if they are capable of rational thought. In other words, the means may be rational but the ends are not. It is not until an action is done from a sense of duty out of a rational understanding of human dignity that it becomes truly a morally praiseworthy action. At least, so Kant thought.

If there is a flaw to rationality I would have to say that it has destroyed illusions and has retroactively attempted and systematically failed to construct suitable replacements.

Objective reasoning is dead, as some might say the light went out. — Cavacava

Objective reasoning is difficult. That's why there's a dearth of it. I don't know if that's a good thing but objective reasoning can lead to situations like killing = the solution. That I find disconcerting to say the least.

I just have this vague doubt concerning rationality. You won't see one person utter a bad word against it. It's just too good to be true. This got me thinking and the only significant shortcoming I found is in moral domain - it needs brains to be bad. We can be good without being rational but we can't be bad without being rational.

Narrow rationality leads to bad results, such as when someone is focused purely on his or her own narrow perspective, their own very specific wants, needs, emotions. A wider rationality considers others' perspectives, others' wants, needs, and emotions. — Bitter Crank

We can be good without rationality but we can't be bad without being rational. Murder needs a strategy but to make someone happy all you need to do is smile. See?

In any case, all that brings meaning to life is about feeling, not thinking, so it is if no matter what rational thinking may or may not be. — Rich

Yes, it's about feelings rather than [/i]rationality[/i].


Murder needs strategy but to do good one can just smile

If there is a flaw to rationality I would have to say that it has destroyed illusions and has retroactively attempted and systematically failed to construct suitable replacements. — darthbarracuda

Thank you for the post. All I'm looking for is a flaw in the undisputed Champion of the human mind.

I'm looking for a blemish on the idol of human worship viz. rationality and I think I found one. Rationality is morally deficient.

You're right but think of it. Being bad requires brains and doing good requires heart(not brains). That's as simple as I can say it.

One needs a heart to be good. One needs brains to be bad.

please read my post above

I'm of the view that evil requires more planning and strategy than being good. In other words rationality is the servant of evil

You might say, "well! Those are all bad arguments for doing anything. Sure, those are bad arguments, but people are flawed and bad arguments are good enough. — Bitter Crank

That is exactly what I would say. I agree that in a sense, IF you believe that the Jews possess all of those negative qualities, and IF you believe that it would be worth killing them all to get rid of these qualities, then it is rational to kill all of the Jews. But the fact is that it isn't rational to believe any of those things and so, all things considered, it isn't rational to kill all of the Jews. To say that Rationality itself is flawed because sometimes people do things which are, all things considered, irrational is like saying that a cooking knife is flawed because some times people use them to stab other people.

Best,
PA

I just have this vague doubt concerning rationality. You won't see one person utter a bad word against it. — TheMadFool

Captain Kirk use to rail against it all the time.

We can be good without being rational but we can't be bad without being rational. — TheMadFool

This is obviously false. People rationally do good things and irrationally do bad things all the time.

We can be good without rationality but we can't be bad without being rational. Murder needs a strategy but to make someone happy all you need to do is smile. See? — TheMadFool

No to both sides. "All you need to do is smile" is, in a word, imbecilic.

I readily agree that rationality is limited, in that it can devise plans, design parts, and lay out elaborate proposals. In itself, rationality tends neither to goodness nor evil. The mainspring of behavior isn't the pre-frontal cortex, it's the limbic system -- the emotions. Wishes, wants, desires, urges, rages, love, hate, hot, cold, and all that are not opposed to rationality, they drive rationality.

Performing 'good' requires as much rationality as performing evil. As Jesus put it, be as subtle as serpents but as gentle as doves. Good ideas badly executed will at least result in waste, fraud, and abuse. To do good well requires rationality.

The flaw in "rational human" isn't that rationality produces evil, it's that alone it doesn't produce much of anything. Again: emotion, not rationality, is the mainspring of behavior.

Well organized hate as opposed to badly organized love, is a cliché--which may be true in some instances, but in general isn't true. International aid programs, social service programs, and all sorts of good works require the same high level organization that wickedness requires.

I just have this vague doubt concerning rationality. — TheMadFool

You are absolutely honest here: you have a vague doubt.

This is obviously false. People rationally do good things and irrationally do bad things all the time. — aletheist

One never knows outcomes before actions. We make choices based upon some inner feeling. How it all turns out? Know I've knows. Maybe OK for some, not OK for others. Maybe starts OK and then turns unpleasant. Maybe the other way around. It's all continuously evolving and changing.

I like the way we are all discussing rationality with the fundamental element being that we are all making choices.

One needs a heart to live and pump blood. It's got bugger all to do with being good, you still need a brain for that too.

One needs a heart to live and pump blood. It's got bugger all to do with being good, you still need a brain for that too. — charleton

And what makes the brain so special? Neurons? Neurons just transmit. It is a relay center. The Mind permeates the body.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/

"The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system, Gershon says. This multitude of neurons in the enteric nervous system enables us to "feel" the inner world of our gut and its contents."

"The second brain informs our state of mind in other more obscure ways, as well. "A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut,"

One needs a heart to be good. One needs brains to be bad. — TheMadFool

There is a sense in which I can agree with this, but I can't see what relevance it has to your questioning of rationality.

Rationality is light, supposedly. It is associated with enlightement, wisdom, philosophy, science, blah blah blah. To find fault in rationality is simply impossible. You would have to be either mad or a fool or both to even think of painting rationality in a negative light.

However, there's this small thing that's been nagging me for some time. Every evil deed that has ever been committed has been done under the aegis of rationality. There's always a perfectly good ''reason'' to insult someone or hit someone ir even to kill him/her. — TheMadFool

This is just intellectual laziness. Most, if not all, the mass shootings in the U.S. were the result of the perpetrator having a history of mental illness. They behaved irrationally and caused a lot of harm to others. I'm not going to use the term, "evil" because that is a subjective term and there are no objective moral laws.

It is just as likely that irrationality can cause harm, so it cannot be rationality or irrationality that causes harm to others. It must be something else. What do you think it could be?