Rationality: a philosophical inquiry into the nature and the rationale of reason

CLARENDON LIBRARY OF LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY General Editor: L. Jonathan Cohen, The Queen's College, Oxford RATIONALITY ...

Author: Nicholas Rescher

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CLARENDON LIBRARY OF LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY General Editor: L. Jonathan Cohen, The Queen's College, Oxford

RATIONALITY

The Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy brings together books, by new as well as by established authors, that combine originality of theme with rigour of statement. Its aim is to encourage new research of a professional standard into problems that are of current or perennial interest. General Editor: L. Jonathan Cohen, The Queen's College, Oxford. Also published in this series Quality and Concept by George Bealer Psychological Models and Neural Mechanisms by Austen ClaTk The Probable and the Provable by L. Jonathan Cohen The Diversity of Moral Thinking by Neil Cooper The Metaphysics of Modality by Graeme Forbes Interests and Rights: The Case Against Animals by R. G. Frey The Logic of Aspect: An Axiomatic Approach by Antony Galton Ontological Economy by Dale Gottlieb Equality, Liberty, and Perfectionism by Vinit Haksar Experiences: An Inquiry into some Ambiguities by J. M. Hinton The Fortunes of Inquiry by N. Jardine Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure by Eva Feder Kittay Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem by Michael E. Levin The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation by J. L. Mackie Divine Commands and Moral Requirements by P. L. Quinn Simplicity by Elliott Sober The Logic of Natural Language by Fred Sommers Blindspots by Roy A. Sorensen The Coherence of Theism by Richard Swinburne Anti-Realism and Logic by Neil Tennant The Emergence of Norms by Edna Ullmann-Margalit Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism by Peter Unger The Scientific Image by Bas C. van Fraassen The Matter of Minds by Zeno Vendler Chance and Structure by John Vickers What is Existence? by C. J. F. Williams Works and Worlds of Art by Nicholas Wolterstorff

RATIONALITY A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and the Rationale of Reason Nicholas Rescher

C L A R E N D O N PRESS • OXFORD 1988

Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York © Nicholas Rescher 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Rescher, Nicholas, 1928Rationality: a philosophical inquiry into the nature and the rationale of reason. (Clarendon library of logic and philosophy). 1. Rationality. I. Title 153.4'3 ISBN 0-19-824435-5 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rescher, Nicholas. Rationality: a philosophical inquiry into the nature and the rationale of reason I Nicholas Rescher— (Clarendon library of logic and philosophy). Includes index. I. Reason. 2. Reasoning. 3. Rationalism. I. Title. II. Series. B833.R47 1988 128'.3—dcl9 88-15191 ISBN 0-19-824435-5 Set by Hope Services, Abingdon Printed in Great Britain at the University Printing House, Oxford by David Stanford Printer to the University

For Dorothy In gratitude

Preface This smallish book broaches a very large topic—the nature and status of rationality. It explains and defends the thesis that rationality consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate objectives. And it argues that cognitive, pragmatic, and evaluative rationality constitute a unified and indissoluble whole in which all three of these resources are inseparably co-present. Good reasons for believing, for evaluating, and for acting go together to make up a seamless and indivisible whole. More specifically, the book deals with the following issues: 1. the mechanics of reason (What is rationality and how does it work?) 2. the rationale of reason (Why be rational? What justifies a reliance on rationality? How is it validated?) 3. the rewards of reason (Does rationality pay? Are rational people happier?) The discussion seeks to clarify the workings of rationality and to provide a clear overview of this important resource, whose possession differentiates Homo sapiens from the remaining inhabitants of the planet and links our species with those other creatures in the cosmos (if such there be) who also possess the resource of reason. In writing this book I have one central objective—to protest against an overly narrow conception of what 'rationality' is all about. When cultivating the limited concerns of a particular discipline it is easy to lose sight of how complex and many-sided rationality is, and there has been a widespread tendency to take an over-narrow view. For the logician, the avoidance of inconsistency is seen as rationality's be-all and end-all. For the economist, it is efficiency in the pursuit of chosen objectives. For the decision theorist, it is correct cost-benefit calculation. Every specialty seems to opt for some narrow desideratum as the definitive feature of reason. In fact, however, rationality is something far-reaching and much-inclusive, and not merely a particular delimited good to

viii

Preface

be achieved by narrow technical means that conveniently lie within the scope limitations of a particular discipline. Properly construed, rationality is as wide-ranging and complex as the domain of intelligence at large. The central thesis of the book is that only a normative theory of rationality can be adequate to the complexities of the subject. In so far as this point is correct, it has an obvious and important consequence. For it means that the various social scientists— psychologists, economists, and decision theorists alike—who want on the one hand to present a theory of rationality while at the same time avoiding the vexing complexities of normative deliberations are engaged in a futile venture and condemned from the very outset to an inappropriate view of the rational enterprise. I began work on this project in Oxford in the summer of 1983, but then had to put it aside because of other commitments until the following summer there, when I managed to complete a first draft. This was reworked in odd moments in the course of the ensuing academic year, and subsequently completed in Oxford during the summers of 1985 and 1986. Like many other products of contemporary American philosophy, this book is indebted to influences astir on both sides of the Atlantic. I am grateful to Linda Butera and Christina Masucci for preparing a workable manuscript through many difficult revisions. And I am obliged to James Allis and to Martha Harty Scheines for reading a draft version of the book and helping me to improve its presentation. One final matter. In using pronouns of reference to generic, otherwise unidentified, agents or persons, I follow the established, yet eminently problematic, custom of employing the masculine form ('he', 'his', etc.) instead of the more appropriate but complex 'he or she', 'his or her'. This saves time for author and reader alike, and money for the purchaser. But let it be said once and for all that no comfort to sexism is intended, and that the reader is authorized and, indeed urged to make a mental substitution of the more complex, but more appropriate, locution. Moreover, by way of compensation, and as a token of bona fides, I have treated the protagonist of the discussion—namely reason—as feminine. In this book, as in most Indo-European languages, reason is a she. N.R. Pittsburgh, PA September, 1987

Contents

1. The Range of Rationality 1.1 Rationality as a Human Resource 1.2 Rationality and Intelligence 1.3 Ramifications of Rationality 1.4 The Systematic Nature of Reason

1 1 2 9 16

2. The Predicament of Reason 2.1 Stage-Setting for the Problem 2.2 Optimum-Instability 2.3 Implications of Optimum-Instability 2.4 Ideal vs. Practical Rationality: The Predicament of Reason

19 19 22 25

3. The Rationale of Rationality: Why Follow Reason? 3.1 The Problem of Validating Rationality 3.2 The Pragmatic Turn: Even Cognitive Rationality has a Pragmatic Basis 3.3 The Self-Reliance of Rationality is not Viciously Circular

33 33

4. Cognitive Rationality and Risk: A Critique of Scepticism 4.1 Is Cognitive Rationality Possible? 4.2 Scepticism and Risk 4.3 The Deficiency of Scepticism 4.4 Against Scepticism: The Pragmatic Dimension 4.5 Scepticism vs. Rationality 5. Cognitive Rationality and Consistency 5.1 Consistency: Absolute Requisite or Ultimate Ideal? 5.2 Preliminaries: Two very Different Sorts of Acceptability 5.3 Motivating the Acceptance of Inconsistent Theses 5.4 Linearly Inferential vs. Dialectically Cyclic Reasoning 5.5 Context and Dialectics 5.6 Consistency as a Cognitive Desideratum

27

39 42 48 48 54 61 64 69 73 73 76 79 83 87 90

x

Contents

6. The Rationality of Ends 6.1 A Critique of the Humean Conception of Reason: Rational Action requires Appropriate Ends 6.2 The Crucial Role of Interests: Wants and Preferences are not Enough for Rationality 7. Economic Rationality and Problems of Utility Maximization 7.1 The Problem of Utility 7.2 Preference vs. Preferability 7.3 Difficulties in Orthodox Decision Theory 8. The Systemic Unity of Reason 8.1 Practical Reason requires Cognitive and Evaluative Reason 8.2 Cognitive Reason has both Practical and Evaluative Dimensions 8.3 Evaluative Reason has Factual and Practical Dimensions 8.4 The Systemic Unity of Reason 8.5 The Parallelism between Rational Inquiry and Evaluation 9. Conceptual Egocentrism and the Limits Of Cognitive Relativism 9.1 Rationality and Cognitive Relativism 9.2 The Basis Problem 9.3 The Local Absoluteness of our own Standards of Rationality 9.4 More on Criteriological Egocentrism: The Primacy of our own Standards 9.5 Limits to Cognitive Relativism: Metacriterial Monism

92 92 97 107 107 111 115 119 119 122 125 126 128 133 133 136 139 144 149

10. The Universality of the Rational 10.1 The Universality of Reason 10.2 Cultivation Hierarchies 10.3 Objectivity and Consensus 10.4 Objectivity and Cognitive Consensuality Contrasted: The Import of the Ideal

157 157 163 169

11. The Rationality of the Real 11.1 The Intelligibility of Nature 11.2 'Our'Side 11.3 Nature's Side

176 176 180 182

172

Contents 11.4 A Recognition of Limits 11.5 A'Principle of Sufficient Reason'?

XI

188 188

12. Rationality and Humanity 12.1 People as Rational Agents: The Presumption of Rationality 12.2 On Failing to do the Rational Thing 12.3 Against the Greeks 12.4 Rationality as a Duty: Ontological Obligation and the Imperative to Reason

191

13. Rationality and Happiness 13.1 Are Rational People happier? 13.2 Two Modes of 'Happiness' 13.3 More on the Affective Rewards of Rationality 13.4 Is Rationality Inhumane? 13.5 Reason as a Basis for Reflective Happiness

210 210 211 216 218 223

14. Conclusion: The Grandeur and Misery of Reason 14.1 The Grandeur of Reason 14.2 The Autonomy of Reason 14.3 The Misery of Reason

224 224 227 229

Name Index Subject Index

231 233

191 194 200 204

1 The Range of Rationality

SYNOPSIS (1) Rationality consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends. It pivots on the use of intelligence or reason, the crucial survival instrument of the human race, in the management of our affairs. (2) The three main contexts of rationality are the cognitive, the practical, and the evaluative. All are united in the common task of implementing 'the best reasons'—reasons for belief, action, and evaluation, respectively. In each case, rationality requires the use of intelligence for optimizing—that is, for figuring out the best thing to do in the circumstances. Good reasons must be both cogent in themselves and, comparatively, the best available, referring to the real interests of the agent rather than mere wants. (3) Although the rational resolution of an issue depends on the contextual circumstances, nevertheless, rationality is universal in the sense that anyone in just the same circumstances would be rationally well advised to adopt the same resolution. (4) Above all, reason is systematic: it requires us to pursue intelligently adopted objectives in intelligent ways, acting on principles that make sense in a systematic way and whose appropriateness other intelligent agents can in principle also determine.

1.1

RATIONALITY AS A HUMAN R E S O U R C E

The ancients saw man as 'the rational animal' (£,£>ov koyov'txov), set apart from other creatures by capacities for speech and deliberation. Under the precedent of Greek philosophy, Western thinkers have generally deemed the use of thought for the guidance of our proceedings to be at once the glory and the duty of Homo sapiens. Rationality consists in the appropriate use of reason to resolve choices in the best possible way. To behave rationally is to make use of one's intelligence to figure out the best thing to do in the circumstances. Rationality is a matter of deliberately doing the best one can with the means at one's disposal—of striving for the best results that one can expect to achieve within the range of

2

The Range of Rationality

one's resources—specifically including one's intellectual resources. Optimization in what one thinks, does, and values is the crux of rationality. Rationality calls for the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends. It is a matter of the recognizably effective pursuit of appropriately appreciated benefits. Rationality thus has a crucially economic dimension, seeing that the impetus to economy is an inherent part of intelligent comportment. Costs and benefits are the pivotal factors. Be it in matters of belief, action, or evaluation, rationality demands a deliberate endeavour to optimize benefits relative to the expenditure of available resources. Reason requires the cultivation of intelligently adopted objectives in intelligent ways. Rationality is not an inevitable feature of conscious organic life. Here on earth, at least, it is our specifically human instrumentality, a matter of our particular evolutionary heritage. Rational intelligence—the use of our brains to guide action by figuring out what is the apparent best—is the survival instrument of Homo sapiens, in much the same way that other creatures have managed to ensure their survival by being prolific, or tough, or well sheltered. It is a means to adaptive efficiency, enabling us—sometimes at least—to adjust our environment to our needs and wants rather than the reverse. But the fact that rationality forms part of our human condition does not automatically validate it. In particular, it does not establish that, while reason has served us well in the past, we might not now do even better by turning elsewhere. Against this background, the principal task of the present book is to clarify the rationale of rationality, and to answer that provocative and fundamental question: 'Why be rational? Are there good reasons for it?'

1.2

RATIONALITY AND I N T E L L I G E N C E

Reason can (and should) come into operation whenever we are in a position to decide what to do—whenever a choice or decision confronts us. Philosophical tradition since Kant sees three major contexts of choice, those of belief, of accepting or endorsing theses or claims, of action, of what overt acts to perform, and of evaluation, of what to value or disvalue. These represent the


3

spheres of cognitive, practical, and evaluative reason, respectively (cf. Display 1.1). DISPLAY

1.1: Objects of Rational Deliberation

1.

C O G N I T I V E R A T I O N A L I T Y : What to believe or accept? What to maintain regarding states of affairs in both the formal and the empirical domains. Product: factual contentions (beliefs). 2. PRACTICAL R A T I O N A L I T Y : What to do or perform? What to decide regarding actions. Product: action recommendations (injunctions). 3. EVALUATIVE R A T I O N A L I T Y : What to prefer or prize? What to adopt regarding goals and ends. Product: evaluations (appraisals).

1 Rationality is not just a matter of thought, but of action as well.The person who proceeds unintelhgently in figuring out the proper thing to do thereby commits a rational fault. But the person who figures out correctly the rationally optimal thing to do in the circumstances and then fails to do it thereby also strays from the path of reason. Whatever sort of 'doing' may be at issue—be it in belief, action, or evaluation—it must be done appropriately if the demands of reason are to be met. One can characterize many different sorts of things as rational— not beliefs, actions, and evaluations alone, but also people, plans, arrangements, and so on. But these are all derivative uses. Rational people are people whose beliefs, evaluations, and actions are on the whole rational; rational plans are plans based upon rational beliefs, assessments, and actions; rational arrangements are those based on rational plans, and so on. The entire fabric of the conception of rationality is spun from the threads of rational belief, evaluation, and action. Someone acts rationally in matters of belief, action, and evaluation when his reasons are cogent reasons. Rationality thus involves the capacity 'to give an account' 1 —to use one's intelligence to provide a 'rationale' for what one does that establishes its appropriateness. It is a matter of conducting one's affairs responsibly—of being able to provide an account of (sufficiently) ' \6yov SiSdvat as Plato puts it in the Republic; cf. Koyov Hxoiv in the Aristotelian formula.

4


telling reasons for what one does in a way that will enable people 'to see the point' and to accept that it makes good sense to proceed as one did. A belief or evaluation or action is accordingly rational if the agent can tell a story that succeeds in making sense of it by showing that—and how—it was a sensible thing to arrive at in the circumstances, due to its optimal conduciveness to appropriate ends. Where something is amiss in an agent's management of his beliefs, evaluations, or actions—where his information or his 'appraisals' or his decisions are inappropriate in the circumstances —there is a failure of rationality. Although rationality functions in all three of the very different domains of cognition, action, and evaluation, it is at bottom one and the same thing that is at issue throughout: effecting the resolution of choices in the best possible way—in line with the strongest reasons. Rational people are, ex officio, in a position to provide a rationale of good reasons for what they do—which is why the range of rationality has, since the days of the philosophers of ancient Greece, generally been deemed coextensive with the linguistically equipped intelligence needed for the articulation of warranting considerations—of reasons. Rationality accordingly pivots on the deployment of 'good reasons': I am being rational if my doings are governed by suitably good reasons—if I proceed in cognitive, in practical, and in evaluative contexts on the basis of cogent reasons for what I do. And the question of motivation is a crucial aspect of rationality; as with morality, it is a matter of doing the right things for the right reasons. (If someone does what is, in the circumstances, the intelligent thing to do, but does it simply by accident or by whim, he is not thereby comporting himself rationally.) To be sure, the reasons that support beliefs, actions, and evaluations may rest on rather general principles and lack any sort of fine-grained particularity. My 'good reason' for taking this medication is simply that the doctor prescribed it; my 'good reason' for believing that the population of Calcutta exceeds five million is simply that the encyclopaedia says so. And that is quite good enough to support the rationality of my beliefs in the circumstances; belief-formation at a remove from the sort of substantive reasons at issue in firsthand information still qualifies as rational.2 2 Note the difference between 'x knows that there is a good reason for his accepting p' and 'There is a consideration known to x which (to his knowledge)


5

A rational agent's 'reason' for taking a certain step (adopting a belief or performing an action or making an evaluation) is a consideration or line of thought which provides this agent with a justifying ground for taking this step, and which can therefore— in the agent's own view—serve to explain or validate it. Of course, not all reasons for actions are good reasons in the sense of being cogent—that is, of such a sort that they would move someone who proceeded in an intelligent and sensible way. To do something rationally is to do it for good and cogent reasons. And this is not the same as just having a motive for doing it. All of us almost always act for motives, but valid reasons are (ex hypothesi) what motivate the rational agent, and most of us do not act rationally all of the time. All too often we are moved to what we do by desires or wants, and these may or may not be rationally well advised. The crux is that it may or may not be in one's best interests to get what one desires—that very much depends on exactly what it is that one happens to want. People automatically have a motive whenever there is a desire, but they only have a good reason for what they do when it is recognizably in their best interests.3 The gambler has reasons for persevering in squandering his resources ('it gives him a perverse sort of pleasure'), and the revenge-seeker also has reasons for stalking his victim. The mere fact that one wants something—that it accords with one's desires —is certainly some reason for opting for it, and provides a 'ground' of sorts. But such wilful agents are 'rational' only in potentiality and not in act. For mere unevaluated desires can provide us with 'reasons' for acting that are not necessarily anything like sufficiently good reasons. From the rational point of view, our mere wants have little significance. They can and should be outweighed by our interests and our needs. A 'minimally' rational agent does what he does for reasons, never mind for the moment whether they be good, bad, or indifferent. But a truly rational agent has good reasons for what he does and acts in such a way as to be well advised in so proceeding. provides a good reason for his accepting p.' The former answers to the pattern Kx(3q)[q & (qRp)] and the latter to the pattern (3q)Kx[q & (qRp)). 3 The idea that mere desires as such are not automatically reason-providing is stressed in Stephen Darwall's recent book, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, 1985). Strange to say, however, the conception of a real interest (which, after all, automatically does provide a good reason for doing something) does not figure much in Darwall's discussion. (The word 'interest' is in fact absent from his index.)

6


Good reasons are those whose guidance optimally serves our real or best interests in the matters at issue. What makes a reason into a good reason is the fact that its implementation leads our efforts in appropriate directions, and the best reasons are those that achieve the most in this way. The rational thing to do is always the intelligent thing—that is, the adoption of the most cost-effective means towards the realization of one's appropriate goals. One can virtually always 'rationalize' something one wants to do, putting it in a favourable light with respect to rationality by finding some reasons for doing it.4 But that by itself does not of course suffice to render the act in question a rational one. For, despite its being supported by some reasons, further, still better, available reasons may well point another way. Rationality is not just a matter of having some reasons for what one does, but of aligning one's beliefs, actions, and evaluations effectively with the best or strongest available reasons. It pivots on doing that which, everything considered, one is 'well advised' to do. The matter of giving or following the course of intelligent and 'responsible' advice is the crux of rationality. To re-emphasize: rationality is a matter of seeking to do the very best we can (realistically) manage to do in the circumstances. To proceed contrariwise by way of 'rationalizing'—by putting reasons for what we want in the place of good reasons for what we ought to do—is an abuse of rationality. Rationality thus calls for appropriate resolutions intelligently arrived at and sensibly implemented. It is geared to the sensible pursuit of appropriate ends. (Here 'ends' is used as a generic term covering both concrete goals and more diffuse values.) Rationality is thus a two-sided, Janus-faced conception. On the side of means, it reflects a pragmatic concern for efficient process, while on the side of the 'appropriateness of ends' it reflects a value-geared concern for product. (Moreover, the acceptability of the means themselves also enters in.) Cognitive reason has historically been seen as the capacity to grasp facts through their underlying rationale by discerning 'the reason why' that lies behind them. It is thus reason that enables us to grasp the substantiating connections between facts (facultas nexum veritatum percipiendi, knowledge of the 'enchainement des 4 For a useful discussion see Robert Audi, 'Rationalization and Rationality', Synthise, 65 (1985), 159-84.

The Range of Rationality 5

7

verites' as Leibniz puts it. The use of reason involves maintaining the systemic linkages between diverse but connected items. 'Treat like case alike' is a salient principle of reason. The impetus to order, coherence, and system is inherent in its operations. The rationality of a particular belief—of accepting a particular contention—is of course a function of the evidence at one's disposal. (The Siamese king who refused to believe that rivers solidify in northern countries at a certain season of the year was perfectly rational, the freezing of water into ice lying wholly outside his experience.) Rationality is a matter of doing things in the best (most intelligent) way one can manage in the circumstances. Rationality is realistic; it does not require more than is possible. Just as a truthful person does not necessarily tell the truth as such, but tells the truth as he sees it—speaking on the basis of his information (which may be imperfect), so a rational person proceeds on the basis of the grounds that are available to him (which may well also be imperfect). The rational person is by definition someone who, in effect, uses his intelligence to maximize the probability—that is, the responsibly-formed, subjective probability—that matters will eventuate favourably for the realization of his real (or 'best') interests. Both cognition and evaluation are accordingly crucial. It is silly to dedicate shrewd means to inappropriate ends; it is foolish to pursue worthy ends by ineffective means. Throughout, rational appropriateness is a matter of determining in which direction the best (or strongest) reasons point. All domains of rationality are thus united by the common mission of finding 'the best reasons'. Rationality's cardinal injunctions are: 'Adopt what is, in the circumstances, the best available option! Pursue it in the way that is, in the circumstances, the best possible way!' The idea of optimization—of seeking for the best alternative —lies at the very core of rationality. The ancient Greek idea that vovs, or reason, is a force operating in the world to make things work out 'for the best', already codifies this critical linkage between rationality and optimality.6 While rationality calls for striving for 'the best' solution, this is frequently not a straightforward matter. Often several distinct 5 6

G. W. Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais, iv. 17, sect. 4. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 41d4, 53b2-4.

8


parameters of merit are operative—say, plausibility, probability, and naturalness (simplicity) in matters of explanation—and they may yield rather different modes of optimality. Generally, we should speak of a rational (and a best) solution of our problems rather than simply the rational (or the best) solution. There often is no uniquely best alternative and, when this is so, rationality leaves us with options. It must be stressed that while rationality requires us 'to do our very best' this is a matter of 'our best'. It is not 'the best that can be done' as distinct from 'the best that can be done by us, given the capacities and resources at our disposal'. Rationality does not make demands beyond the limits of what is genuinely possible for us—it does not require accomplishments beyond the limits of the possible. For rationality, no more is demanded of us than doing our realistic best to work efficiently and effectively towards the realization of our cognitive, practical, and evaluative goals. Rationality is, indeed, a matter of optimization—of doing the best we can by implementing the strongest reasons—but this must be understood as the best we can feasibly manage to do in the existing circumstances. Some problems are simply too complex to admit of a perfect resolution by the means actually at our disposal. Hence, rationality asks for no more than that we do the best we can manage with the means in hand. Being realistic is a part of being rational. To be sure, rationality is not just a passive matter of making good use of the materials one has on hand—in cognitive matters, say, the evidence in view. It is also a matter of actively seeking to enhance these materials: in the cognitive case, by developing new evidential resources that enable one to amplify and to test one's conclusions. The endeavour to make the most of one's opportunities is an aspect of intelligence that is crucial to rationality. (To rest content with unquestioned habit, for example, is a defect of intelligence that is not consonant with rationality.) The logician takes consistency to be the bulwark of rationality, the scientist evidential cogency, the economist efficiency. All are right, but each only partially so. Each focuses upon what is no more than a part of reason—that one particular aspect of intelligent procedure that is of primary importance for his own field. The crucial point is that rationality as such is something complex and many-sided—though all of its parts are embraced


9

within the one, overall generic formula that rationality consists in the intelligent conduct of one's affairs. There is a difference between rationality and reasonableness— between being rational and being willing to 'listen to reason'. For it is not necessarily rational to 'be reasonable'—sometimes the best means to appropriate ends lie in terminating 'mere discussion' (in the training of children, for example, or in certain negotiations). Sometimes, moreover, it is clever—and indeed altogether rational—to act in an 'irrational' way. Think of the suitor who feigns indifference, or of the tactician who makes occasional 'foolish mistakes' to keep the opponent off balance with his unpredictability. This sort of thing may well prove rational after all, since there are perfectly good reasons for proceeding in such a manner as to fail, in certain circumstances, to do the 'rationally appropriate' thing. A deeper rationality may, on occasion, countermand the obvious-seeming requirements of reason. Sometimes 'rationality' is contrasted with 'feeling', and 'reason' with 'human sympathy'. But this overly cerebral conception represents a far too narrow and one-sided view of reason's domain. Rationality is broad and comprehensive. Feelings are generally not a matter of reasoning, but they are certainly not outside the province of reason. As Pascal saw, 'the heart too has its reasons, which are unknown to mind'. Feelings too can provide reasons and canalize the operations of intelligence. The human spirit extends beyond the human body that determines our 'material' interests and the human mind that determines our 'cognitive' interests. (Man lives not by bread or by knowledge alone—nor even by their combination.) Neither man's material interests nor yet his cognitive interests exhaust the realm of appropriate values. Reason herself recognizes the utility and appropriateness of our 'higher' (aesthetic and affectively social and even 'spiritual') values. The realm of rationality is as large and comprehensive as the domain of valid human concerns and interests.

1.3

RAMIFICATIONS OF RATIONALITY

Rationality makes demands upon us. It speaks in didactic tones: this or that is what you should do. Its declarations have a

10


normative force, enjoining us as to how we ought to go about settling questions of what to believe, do, or value. 'These are the strongest reasons for belief, action, and evaluation—be governed by them!' Reason addresses us in the imperative mood in impelling us to meet her requirements. The rational man is committed to an optimal use of his resources—to doing as well as he possibly can with the inevitably limited means at his disposal. (He does not go out and buy the best available car, but settles for the best that fits into his overall budget.) In matters of belief, action, and evaluation we must proceed within the budget of our intellectual and other resources (of time, effort, finances, and ability), doing the best we can in the full recognition that this may not lead us to the ideally best. A rational person is someone who is impelled by reason in what he believes, does, and values—who endeavours to let all his proceedings be governed by, and shaped with a view to, the strongest reasons. Being rational consists in the disposition to make good reasons constitute the motives for what one does. Since this is something we can achieve only within limits, one must regard perfect rationality as an idealization and acknowledge that we humans are 'rational animals' because of our capacity for reason, and certainly not because of our achievement of perfected rationality. The fundamentals of rationality are the same on all sides, alike whether the 'doing' at issue is a matter of belief or evaluation or action: , ,r . A r 1. X does A 2. X has good, and indeed X does A rationally = \ overridingly good, reasons for doing A 3. X does A on the basis of these reasons That 'overridingly' of the preceding formula requires comment. We only have overridingly good reasons for doing something if our reasons for doing it are better (stronger) than our reasons for not doing it—and thus better than those for doing any one of its alternatives. This stress on overridingly good reasons reflects rationality's concern for optimization—for doing the very best we can in the prevailing conditions. What is crucial for rationality throughout is proceeding on the basis of preponderating reasons.


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Accordingly, rationality in all its forms calls for the comparative assessment of feasible alternatives, and so demands five faculties: 1. Imagination: the capacity to contemplate alternatives—to entertain alternative possibilities, project hypotheses, and perform 'if-then' thinking. 2. Information-processing: the capacity to determine what can and cannot be done—to map the boundaries of feasibility, so as to determine what abstract possibilities are actually realizable, what theoretical prospects are realistic alternatives. 3. Evaluation: the capacity to assess how desirable various sorts of situations are—to appraise alternatives. 4. Selection—Informed Choice: the capacity to effect a choice between alternatives, to adopt one and reject others—and to do this in the light of the considerations at issue in 1-3 above. 7 5. Agency: the capacity to implement choices. As the last two entries indicate, rationality is not purely intellectual, but also involves the will, the capacity of choice. If—as seems sensible—we define 'free-will' as the capacity for intelligent choice among alternatives, then it follows that only a creature endowed with free-will can be rational. Moreover, for rational agency—as opposed to rational judgement as such—the capacity to implement one's choices in action is also necessary. This ability separates rational agency from mere intelligence as such, thus setting persons apart from mere intelligences. (In consequence it makes for a gap between the 'artificial intelligence' of robots and fully endowed, rational creatures. For as long as an intelligence can only solve given problems, and cannot freely select its own problems and define the agenda of its own operations, it will not qualify as a rational agent.) These resources of imagination, cognition, evaluative appreciation, and judgementally guided choice are essential to any mode of rationality, while for practical rationality the capacity for action is also a requisite. A creature lacking any of the preceding capacities will not qualify as a fully rational being or person. Reason is something many-sided: only a complex creature can be rational. 7

Cf. Frederic Schick, Having Reasons (Princeton, 1984), esp. chap. 2.

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This complexity is mirrored in rationality itself. Overall, it has the structure set out in Display 1.2, and accordingly has two major divisions: the theoretical (which includes the cognitive and the evaluative sectors) and the practical or pragmatic. Being rational is a matter of doing the intelligent thing, where 'doing' is neutral between thought (mental doing, like accepting or prizing) and action (actual behavioural doing). DISPLAY

1.2: A Taxonomy of Reason

I. From the Angle of Inputs T H E O R E T I C A L : no action directives are (essential) inputs (purely) FACTUAL: only (purported) facts are inputs VALUE-INVOLVING: values are among the inputs PRACTICAL: action directives are among the inputs II. From the Angle of Outputs COGNITIVE: (purported) facts are outputs NORMATIVE: values or action directives are outputs EVALUATIVE: values are outputs PRAGMATIC: action directives are outputs Consider the following four theses: 1. A is the rationally appropriate thing for X to do (to perform or to believe or to value) in the circumstances. 2. X does ,4. 3. X does A out of a recognition that 1 is the case. 4. X acts rationally in doing A. Note the following points: A. We do not have it that: (1 & 2) -> (4). For if X fails to realize that A is the rational thing to do—indeed may even think that not-A is the rational thing to do—but nevertheless does A (say simply to please someone), then X is not acting rationally in doing A. B. We certainly do have it that: (1 & 3) -» (4).


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This inference is unproblematically valid. For here X {by hypothesis) does the rationally appropriate thing for a rationally cogent reason. C. However, it is not the case that 3 affords the only route from 1 to 4. For example, if X has been trained (habituated) to do A because of its appropriateness, and does it 'automatically' in the suitable circumstances, then we have a perfectly viable alternative route from 1 to 4. D. As we have seen, moreover, 4 is perfectly compatible with not-1. If in his prevailing epistemic circumstances the agent has every reason to believe that 1 is so, even though it in fact is not, for reasons he does not know and cannot reasonably be expected to know, then other things being equal, he will act altogether rationally in doing A. Point (C) deserves special emphasis. Rational procedure can be a matter simply of good insight rather than one of discursive inference—it can issue from recognizing a good reason rather than from arguing one's way to it by some inferential process. Rational agency requires intelligent behaviour. But it does not always require deliberation—Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding. 8 A drowning man swirls in the rapids. He sees two branches coming within reach. Straight away, without any further thought, he clutches one of them. He certainly does something intelligently—and perhaps even, in a way, 'deliberately'—namely 'clutch a branch'. But he does not just 'clutch a branch'—he grasps this one rather than that one. But at that point further reasoning and deliberation do not (and ought not to) come into it. Deliberation is a luxury our drowning man just cannot afford. There must always be good reasons why a genuinely rational act was done as it was, and indeed the agent must have such reasons in an at least tacit or implicit way. But this recognition of reasons can be unconscious, as it were. I am tacitly aware of what I am doing when I 'instinctively' grasp that branch. I do not stop to think and deliberate. But all the same I acted rationally. In such a case it is in fact altogether rational not to deliberate. Agents can unquestionably act in an altogether rational way without any actual reasoning on their part on the spot, then and there. Sometimes rationality demands doing something straight off; it becomes necessary 'to get in there and do something', without any prior deliberation whatsoever. This, of course, is itself a 'lesson of reason'. In such cases we are not going against reason, 8

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, III. ii. 15.

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we are being 'perfectly rational'. Again, there is sometimes simply no need to deliberate further. The sick man must take one of those pills from the bottle. Once he realizes that he must do so, there is no point in deliberating further about which one. It just does not matter. Then, too, the particular case at hand is sometimes covered by a general policy that is already in place. When I enter the car, I put the seat belt on automatically. It is doubtless rational to do so, but this is not something I need to deliberate about at this point, having (sensibly) schooled myself to do it in the past. In all such cases one acts—even without concurrent reasoning—out of a pre-established recognition that there is a good reason for what one does. While rationality is a matter of implementing the best of (available) reasons, this can be done, quite appropriately, through policy via habit rather than by overt intention entertained explicitly on the spot. Still, typically and quintessential^ rationality operates through explicit deliberation in the face of recognized alternatives. The cultivation of appropriate ends by suitable means is the life-blood of rationality. That is why foresight and the systematic coordination of actions into the framework of a coherent plan are crucially important instruments of rational action. Considering that reason-guided free agency is essential to being a person, the question seemingly arises: is one a better person in so far as one is more rational in one's actions? The answer is: 'Yes— in a way.' For the more rationally one acts, the more fully one realizes—other things being equal—the ideals and values at issue in being a person. For, it is this normative aspect that is crucial. To ask the question in view is not like asking: Given that having a backbone is essential to being a mammal, is one a better animal in so far as one has a larger backbone? For mammalhood—unlike personhood—is not a normative conception for which 'better mammalhood' makes sense. However, as an inherently normative conception, personhood admits of fuller or lesser degrees of realization. One can do better or worse at exercising and actualizing the sorts of capacities that constitute the characterizing requisites for being a person—rationality among them. The methods we use in cultivating rationality change in the light of the experience we have with them.9 New cognitive tools 9

See the author's Methodological Pragmatism (Oxford, 1977).


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(statistics, for example) can amplify the reach of cognitive reason, for example. But the basic commitment to the intelligent pursuit of intelligently adopted objectives remains the steadfast, guiding beacon for rational endeavour. Rationality as such is something fixed—its nature is constant. But while rationality itself is something stable, the course of action it requires of us changes with circumstances and conditions. Suppose, for example, that we are caught up in a particular interaction situation of the sort described in Display 1.3, fully recognized as such by both of us. In this situation, I do indeed have 'a (good) reason' for not doing A, since this might result in my most preferred alternative—and indeed represents the only route to this desideratum. But this is clearly not a wise step, since I would do well to reflect as follows: 'From your angle, doing B is clearly the best choice: it yields a preferred result for you regardless of how I make my choice. Hence, I should count on your doing B (once I credit you with enough intelligence to figure out that this is how the land lies). And therefore I should myself do A, which would in any case avert worse coming to worst in the realization of my least-preferred alternative.' The supposed 'good reason' was simply not good enough. Rational choice in a given situation generally requires a consideration of the wider context. DISPLAY

1.3: An Interaction Situation

I do A?

You do B?

My preference ranking

Your preference ranking

yes yes no no

yes no yes no

3 2 4 1

2 4 1 3

No particular concrete course of action is ever rational or irrational as such. For, it will always be possible that a situation may arise in which some seemingly irrational action is 'the lesser evil' because all the available alternatives make even less sense. Only if we characterize an action in a normatively 'loaded' way ('taking a needless risk', 'making an ill-considered choice') can we assure its irrationality. With neutrally described actions, however, a closer scrutiny of situational details will always be necessary to warrant a verdict of irrationality.

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The Range of Rationality 1.4

THE SYSTEMATIC NATURE OF REASON

As already emphasized, rationality calls for proceeding on the basis of good reasons for whatever we do (be it in matters of belief, action, or evaluation). It consists in one's being in a position to provide, in principle, a cogent account of one's proceedings—an account that would convince other rational beings of the appropriateness of what one does. This demand for an account that is both cogent and coherent endows reason with a certain holistic and systemic character, seeing that local resolutions must be embedded in a global framework. Rationality is governed by certain pervasive 'desiderata of reason' that bind together the proceedings of different rational agents—and the proceedings on different occasions of a single agent—under the aegis of overarching principles. Above all, reason requires us to proceed in a way that 'makes sense'. Whether in matters of belief, action, or evaluation, rationality demands: consistency (avoid self-contradiction), uniformity (treat like cases alike), coherence (make sure that your commitments hang together), simplicity (avoid needless complications), economy (be efficient). These 'requisites of reason' require little commentary—they are familiar to the point of triteness. But, for the sake of a single example, let us contemplate coherence. For a rational being deliberately to (1) accept a contention, (2) adopt an end, or (3) make an evaluation, is also to commit himself to (1) accepting those things he deems to be consequences of this contention, (2) accept those things he deems to be means to this end, or (3) make like evaluations of those things he deems to be analogous with this valued item. All these ways of proceeding are simply instances of the demand for coherence in rational procedure. The 'virtues of rationality' are the characteristics of a system. They make for an organic (or systematic) unity of procedure, serving to make sure that everything fits together in an effective and mutually supportive way. Reason is the organizing force in the mental life of an intelligent creature—the orderer of chaotic events into coherent experience. It is the instrumentality by which


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mind secures its grasp upon a difficult and unstable world. The rules of reason are 'regulative principles'—instructions that keep the conduct of our various affairs on an efficient, effective, and thus intelligent basis. Reason is eminently practical—it wants what works (is efficient and effective). But it pre-eminently also wants what makes sense. The systematic aspect of reason inheres in its drive for intelligibility—in its demand for ways of proceeding whose appropriateness other intelligent agents can in principle perceive. It is in this sense alone that one can maintain the universality of the force of reason: Whatever considerations render it rational for someone to do A will ipso facto render it rational for anyone 'in his circumstances' to do A—anyone placed in conditions sufficiently like his. To act rationally is to do that which one is well advised to do in the circumstances, and good advice is a matter not of persons but of the situations in which they find themselves. This conditional character is a key aspect of the 'universality' of rationality. Sometimes, to be sure, it is very unlikely, or even impossible, that many or most others could find themselves in those particular circumstances. For example, it could happen that certain opportunities for advantageous action are opened up by the circumstance that most others are not doing something. It can be perfectly rational for people to act 'out of step' with the majority; for example, when a fashionable trend leaves a useful niche abandoned. But, clearly, contra-majority action is not something that everyone could do. The fact that something that is rational for someone is rational for anyone else who is 'in his shoes' thus does not mean that it is rational for everyone, full stop. It may (as in this case of productively eccentric action) even be logically impossible for everyone to act in this way at a given time. The question of what we would do if we were 'in someone else's shoes' of course raises the issue of just what are we to take along when we step into those shoes? If we take nothing of our own along, then we are bound to see the issue exactly as he does— there is no other possibility. If we take everything along, then of course he simply vanishes from the scene—his idiosyncratic wants and needs count for nothing. What we have to do to proceed realistically is assess what it would be appropriate to do in conditions 'sufficiently like' his, specifically what it would be intelligent to do in the light of his information and of his situation.

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It is not a matter of changing the rules of the game on our subject, but one of assessing how well he plays the game by his rules—the rules he does, or ought to, follow, given his valid needs and real interests. What we take along, then, is our native intelligence and our 'common sense'—our ability to think and to judge as sensible people. However, the various substantive commitments on matters of fact and of value are things that we must in large measure take over from the agent at issue. These various perspectives and theses regarding the nature and workings of rationality set the stage on which the deliberations of the book will unfold. Their elaboration and consolidation is the principal task before us.10 10 The article 'Reason' by G. J. Warnock in vol. 7 of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. P. Edwards (New York, 1967), also gives an overview of our terrain. However, the best encyclopaedia article on rationality in general is that in Jos6 Ferrater Mora, Diccionario de Filosofia, iv. 2774-9 (art. 'Raz6n'). Books well worth consulting include: KurtBaier, The Moral Point of View (Ithaca, 1958); S. T. Benn and G. W. Mortimore (eds.), Rationality and the Social Sciences (London, 1976); Jonathan Bennett, Rationality (London, 1964); Brand Blanshard, Reason and Analysis (London, 1962); George Boas, The Limits of Reason (New York, 1961); Morris R. Cohen, Reason and Nature (New York, 1931); Stephen Darwall, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, 1983); A. C. Ewing, Reason and Intuition (Oxford, 1942); Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott (London, 1928); Arthur E. Murphy, The Uses of Reason (New York, 1943); Ernest Nagel, Sovereign Reason (Glencoe, 1954); Stephen Nathanson, The Ideal of Rationality (Atlantic Highlands, 1985); George Santayana, The Life of Reason (rev. edn., New York, 1954); W. H. Walsh, Reason and Experience (Oxford, 1947); A. N. Whitehead, The Function of Reason (Princeton, 1929). An interesting anthology of recent essays is J. Margolis, M. Krausz, and R. M. Burian (eds.), Rationality, Relativism, and the Human Sciences, (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster, 1986). Other references are given in the encyclopaedia articles mentioned above.

2 The Predicament of Reason

(1) The rationally appropriate resolution of a problem arrived at on the basis of one body of information may well become unstuck when that body of information is enlarged. (2) Rationality is a matter of doing the best one can in the circumstances—of optimization relative to situational constraints—and an enlarged experience can always alter those constraints decisively. Rational solutions to problems are ampliatively context-sensitive: enhanced data can lead to altogether different results. (3) But we can never rest assured that the information we actually have is complete in all relevant regards—all we can ever do is to hope or presume that it is so. (4) Consequently, we face the predicament of reason inherent in the circumstance that rationality requires us to do what appears best in the full and clear recognition that this may well fail to be anything like the best thing to do. SYNOPSIS

2.1

S T A G E - S E T T I N G FOR THE PROBLEM

The road to rationality, like that of true love, does not always run smooth. For, his very rationality can lead a rational agent into difficulty. To see how this comes about, consider the following series of problem-solving situations: Case 1: Deductive information-extraction D A T A : A certain quantity x satisfies the following condition: x2 no objectivity His position is predicated on the principle that 'if different people can (justifiedly) think differently about some issue, then there just is no objective fact of the matter with regard to it'. He takes the line that where there is no relatively enforceable consensus—so that if two people disagree, then one of them is necessarily being unreasonable—then the issue is not an objective one: there is no 'fact of the matter'; the issue is one of mere opinion, of arbitrary decision, or a-rational (if not outright irrational) allegiance. This attribution of dire implications to unavailable consensus dates back to the teachings of the sceptics of classical antiquity—to the last of the ten tropes, the arguments for scepticism inventoried in classical antiquity by Sextus Empiricus in his Pyrrhonian Hypotheses.7 This argument pivots on the variation across the range of man's culturally diverse views in matters of custom, manners, laws, and above all beliefs. Throughout the sceptical tradition, this variation of customs has been invoked to support a deconstructionism that takes a lack of consensus to betoken an absence of the objective factuality needed for meaningful deliberation. The prospect of different constructions, different interpretations or opinions, is taken to annihilate the matter in view as an objective issue. The vitiating flaw of this position is that its salient mediating premiss is completely unjustified. To validate a move from the premiss 'People do not agree about Jf to the conclusion 'X does not represent a genuine issue of objective fact', what is required is clearly a thesis to this effect: If X is an authentic factual issue, then people will, of necessity, ultimately come to agree about it. But the closer one looks at this thesis the less plausible it appears. Where is the Moses who has come down from the mountain with a stone-graven guarantee that whenever there indeed are facts we 7

Seebk. 1, 145ff.

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imperfect mortals can come to discern them with an accuracy that precludes disagreement? With many kinds of clearly objective issues, we can readily account for failures to achieve consensus in ways that do not at all countervail the existence of facts of the matter. And this is so, in particular, throughout the domain of rationality. In the case of factual information, the circumstance of evidential diversity, obtaining because different people have different bodies of evidence at their disposal, makes for a perfectly warranted— indeed rationally mandated—differentiation of belief. In the case of evaluation, the circumstance of experiential diversity (the fact that different people have different bodies of experience at their disposal) makes for a perfectly warranted—indeed rationally mandated—differentiation of appraisal. And the same holds for judgements about the appropriateness of actions. Sceptics through the ages have always failed to note how little actually follows from a lack of consensus. For one thing, one cannot argue: 'Consensus has not been achieved; therefore, consensus cannot be achieved.' More seriously yet, one cannot even argue: 'Consensus cannot be achieved by us humans, therefore, there is no truth or fact of the matter.' In the cognitive case, for example, there are clearly different defensible answers to questions like 'What sort of person was Napoleon?' or 'What motivated Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon?' But de-objectification certainly does not follow—our inability to reach consensus in empirical inquiry certainly does not entail that there is no sort of objective 'fact of the matter' at issue, and that any set of opinions is as good as any other. Consider, moreover, the situation in the natural sciences. The history of science is a story of changes of mind. Where are the 'scientific truths' of yester-year—the absolute space of the Newtonian era, the luminiferous aether of turn-of-the-century physics? And there is no good reason to think this process will come to a stop. The scientists of the year 3,000 will think our theories every bit as inadequate as we deem those of our predecessors of 300 years ago. There is no reason to think that progress will ever come to a stop and that we will attain a definitive 'final solution', a definitive consensus enduring across the generations. But, this is no ground for seeing science as a misconceived activity dealing with non-factual matters.

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The truth as such hinges on what the objective facts of the matter are. Consensus in the community of inquirers, on the other hand, is a matter of human doings and dealings—a question of how people think about things on the basis of the evidence at their disposal. It is clearly problematic to contend that whenever there is a fact of the matter we are bound to acquire enough of the right sort of evidence to find it out. The argument 'No consensus, therefore no objectivity' is thus deeply flawed. Dismissive relativism is predicated on the naive optimism of the notion that 'If we can get there at all, we can get there easily—certainly quickly enough to have arrived there by now.' Such a view is naive in its quest for the easy answer; its unwillingness to be patient in developing the complex distinctions needed for a reasonable and sensible appraisal of the implications of an absence of consensus. (Perhaps too it commits the fallacious slide from 'No facts, no consensus' to 'No consensus, no facts'.) No doubt, disagreement will (and should) engender caution, undermining any facile confidence that we have actually got it right. But there are no adequate grounds for construing disagreement—even stubbornly enduring disagreement—to mean that there just is no objective fact to disagree about. There is no reason to reject the idea that while in various areas of inquiry and deliberation we presently lack and indeed may never achieve consensus, we nevertheless operate in perfectly legitimate domains of deliberation where the idea of rational appropriateness applies.

1 0 . 4 OBJECTIVITY AND COGNITIVE CONSENSUALITY CONTRASTED: THE IMPORT OF THE IDEAL

Consensus among rational inquirers across the divides of time and culture is not something that often (let alone necessarily) happens in the real world. The link of consensus to factuality can only be established tightly at the level of idealization—only ideal or perfectly competent inquirers need reach a consensus on factual matters. In this imperfect sublunary dispensation, consensus is too much to expect—or to ask for. The sort of consensuality at issue with objectivity is a matter of ideal circumstances. It is not something on which we should insist here and now. Objectivity stands co-ordinate not with actual but with Meal consensus.


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(Actual consensus/dissensus can be no more than a matter of providing relatively weak evidence for or against objectivity.) There is something deeply problematic about C. S. Peirce's view that if there is a real truth of the matter—if there is a fact of the matter at all—then continuing inquiry must eventually find or at least approximate it. And the idea of a transcendental argument— in the manner of Juergen Habermas—to an 'ultimate consensus' that must eventually emerge in the community of rational inquirers just does not work. For, Habermas is ill-guided in thinking that consensus as such is an ultimate objective of rational inquiry by way of being a realistic destination for the enterprise.8 The linkage between consensus and rationality is not descriptive or explanatory, but normative. With rationality, the crux is not what does work towards achieving consensus, but what should work to do so—what indeed would do so among fully rational people. How consensus is achieved is crucial for validity and thus for the whole issue of good reasons. Good reasons are not good because they lead to consensus, but they ought (ideally) to lead toward consensus because they are good. Only at the ideal level is there a linkage between rationality and consensuality. To say that matters of rationality are objective is not to say that people will reach agreement about them—it is to say no more than that they would reach agreement if they proceeded in a totally adequate way. Rationality is a matter of idealization. It gazes towards idealities and away from the actualities of an imperfect world. Different cultures will no more agree about the world's character than different eras will agree about the factual truths of science. And the reason for this in both cases is much the same— different groups have different bodies of experience. But, the evidential relativity of our contentions does not show that there are no facts of the matter on the topics to which they relate, and no objectively rational decisions to be made. The different views of those who have different data at their disposal no more destroy factuality and objectivity than the fact that different associates have different opinions of him annihilates a person. A salient demand of rationality is that we resolve the issues that face us in matters of belief, action, and evaluation as best we can on the basis of the experience at our disposal. But, the very fact 8

Juergen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston, Mass., 1979), 188 and 204-5.

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that we are a plurality of rational beings with very different bodies of experience means that we must (rationally) resolve the issues before us differently. (It is at bottom this fact that makes the achievement of an actual consensus on substantive issues—and even on those procedural matters that reflect substantive commitments—something that is altogether dispensable for rationality.) But does abandoning a requirement for consensus not make rationality into something variable and culture dependent? Not at all. It means no more than that the ideal of rationality is pursued— within those cultures which happen to pursue it at all—-in variable and circumstance-conditioned ways. And this is surely quite harmless. After all, rationality is in this regard like communication. What communication is is the same everywhere and for everyone. But, of course different people in different places and times go at it rather differently. The cultivation-hierarchy perspective shows how different solutions reached in different circumstances can be justified by the same defining principles of rationality. The normative aspect of consensuality becomes crucial; for, to say that a rational resolution of an issue is universally binding on everyone is ambiguous. It can be construed descriptively as 'Everyone in fact considers themselves to be so bound', or prescriptively as 'Everyone ought to consider themselves to be so bound. It is this second, prescriptive mode of universality that is appropriate in our present context. No sensible rationalist has ever failed to recognize that the prescriptions of reason are nonuniversal in the former, consensus-oriented sense. These considerations support an important conclusion. Objectivity is essential to rationality, but consensus is not. Consensus is a matter of the development of people's views and hinges on such variable matters as evidence, education, and 'climate of opinion'. Consensus turns on what people do think: objectivity on what they ought to think.And the two converge only in the ideal limit—only where people do as they ought. Only 'ideal' consensus—consensus in an idealized community of perfectly rational agents with shared evidence and experience—bears on rationality as such. Consensus accordingly should be no more for us than a Kantian regulative ideal. No doubt, consensus is a good thing. When we have it, we can feel optimistically reassured of being on the right track—although St Augustine's dictum securus iudicat orbis terrarum doubtless overstates the matter. But, consensus is not something


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on which we should insist so strongly that we dismiss as inappropriate or worthless ideas and views that lack the benefit of its reassuring presence. Objective and interpersonally operable standards are indispensably necessary for rationality to take hold: only where an issue is objective can rational deliberation come into it. But the realization of substantive consensus is not essential for rationality—at any rate not in the way of an achievement, or even of an expectation as contradistinguished from an aspiration and a hope. Consensus is not an eventual destination but merely a hopeful aspiration. The ideal demands of reason are absolute. But absolutes are never at our actual disposal. No language, no belief system, no thought framework is absolute—delivered in unchangeable perfection to mankind by the world spirit from on high. We can do no more and no better than to use the local, particularized, diversified instruments that come to hand. Thus far, relativism is both inevitable and correct. But, this emphatically does not engender an indifferentistic subjectivism. On the contrary, in rationally adopting a basis for the conduct of our affairs we become committed to trying for one that ought to be binding on everyone. It is the unifying cement of the ideal aspect of rationality—a crucial aspect built into our determinative notion of what 'rationality' is all about—that prevents rationality from becoming unravelled through the relativistic variability of our rational proceedings. Rationality itself is, after all, a project that we are bound to pursue by variable means amongst the varied circumstances of a difficult world, where the consensus that objectivity ideally involves may well be unattainable in practice. (The extent to which' reality co-operates with the demands of rationality is limited.) Rationality must, for us, remain something of an ideal which we can only realize to the limited extent that the circumstances of our situation permit.

11 The Rationality of the Real

SYNOPSIS (1) How is one to account for the fact that 'the real is rational' —that nature is intelligible to us in our man-made, conceptual terms? (2) The answer lies in part in the fact that we are ourselves products of nature and that our intellectual mechanisms—science included—fit nature because they are the intellectual instrumentalities of a creature that itself is the product of an evolutionary process, proceeding within nature's realm. (3) Nature for her part must also be co-operative—learnable enough for the development of intelligence to come about by evolutionary means. (4) Along these lines one can secure a strictly scientific explanation of the impressive effectiveness of natural science in comprehending nature's ways. There is no warrant—and no need—for postulating a metaphysical thesis of 'the rationality of the real' to accomplish this explanatory job. (5) Accordingly, maintaining the rational intelligibility of the real does not require one to accept a 'principle of sufficient reason'. To be sure, such a principle is available. But it is—in so far as plausible—of a strictly methodological and not substantive character.

1 1 . 1 THE I N T E L L I G I B I L I T Y OF NATURE

Why is nature intelligible to man? How is it that we insignificant humans, who play so small a part on the world's immense stage, can manage to unlock nature's secrets and gain intellectual access to nature's laws? And how is it that our mathematics—seemingly a free creative invention of the human imagination—can be used in science to characterize the operations of nature with such uncanny efficacy and accuracy? Why is it that the majestic lawful order of nature is intelligible to us humans in our man-devised, conceptual terms? This issue of why it should be that 'the real is rational' deserves consideration in the setting of a study of rationality in general. Like their theological predecessors, the philosophical theoreticians of ancient Greece were inclined to personify nature in various

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ways. Accordingly, they assigned to reason (Sidvoia voi*;, in Latin ratio) an actively directive role not only in human affairs but in the world as well. As they saw it, like calls unto like, and reason in man resonates to reason in nature. We have long ago ceased to hold to such an anthropomorphic view of things, and deem it implausible to say (with Anaxagoras and Plato) that reason makes the world go around. Judaeo-Christian thought took another turn. It saw the world as the created product of a mathematicizing intelligence—as the work of a creator who proceeded more mathematico in designing nature. Such a view also renders nature's mathematical intelligibility unproblematic. God endows nature with a mathematical order and mind with a duly consonant mathematicizing intelligence. There is thus no problem about how the two get together— God simply arranged it that way. But, of course, if this is to be the canonical rationale for mind's grasp on nature's laws, then when recourse to God for the purposes of scientific explanation is abandoned our hold on the intelligibility of nature is also lost. Some of the deepest intellects of the day think that this secure hold is gone for ever. Various scientists and philosophers of the very first rank nowadays affirm commonly and without hesitation that we just cannot hope to solve this puzzle of the intelligibility of nature in a mathematically lawful manner. Erwin Schroedinger characterizes the circumstance that man can discern the laws of nature as 'a miracle that may well be beyond human understanding'.1 Eugene Wigner asserts that 'the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious, and there is no rational explanation for it'2 and he goes on to wax surprisingly lyrical in maintaining that: 'The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.'3 Even Albert Einstein stood in awe before this problem. In a letter written in 1952 to an old friend of his Berne days, Maurice Solovine, he wrote: 1

Erwin Schroedinger, What is Life? (Cambridge, 1945), 31. Eugene P. Wigner, 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences', Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 13 (1960), 1-14 (see p. 2). 3 Ibid. p. 14. 2

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You find it curious that I regard the intelligibility of the world (in the measure that we are authorized to speak of such an intelligibility) as a miracle or an eternal mystery. Well, a priori one should expect that the world be rendered lawful only to the extent that we intervene with our ordering intelligence . . . (But) the kind of order, on the contrary, created, for example by Newton's theory of gravitation, is of an altogether different character. Even if the axioms of the theory are set by men, the success of such an endeavour presupposes in the objective world a high degree of order that we were a priori in no way authorized to expect. This is the 'miracle' that is strengthened more and more with the development of our knowledge . . . The curious thing is that we have to content ourselves with recognizing the 'miracle' without having a legitimate way of going beyond it.4 On this grand question of how natural science is possible at all, some of the best scientific intellects of the day thus avow themselves baffled and unhesitatingly proceed to shroud the issue in mystery and mysticism. According to all these theorists, we are confronted with a genuine mystery. We have to acknowledge that nature is intelligible, but have no real prospect of understanding why this is so. The problem of nature's intelligibility via man's mathematical theorizing is seen as intractable, unresolvable, hopeless. All three of these eminent Nobel laureates in physics unblushingly employ the word 'miracle' in this connection. Perhaps, then, the question is even illegitimate and should not be raised at all. Perhaps the issue of nature's intelligibility is not just intractable, but actually inappropriate and somehow based on a false presupposition. For, to ask for an explanation of why scientific inquiry is successful presupposes that there indeed is a rationale for this fact. And if this circumstance is bound to be fortuitous and accidental, then no such rationale can exist. This is exactly the line taken by Karl Popper, who writes: [Traditional treatments of induction] all assume not only that our quest for [scientific] knowledge has been successful, but also that we should be able to explain why it is successful. However, even on the assumption (which I share) that our quest for knowledge has been very successful so far, and that we now know something of our universe, this success becomes miraculously improbable, and therefore inexplicable; for an approach at an endless series of improbable accidents is not an 4

Albert Einstein, Lettres a Maurice Solovine (Paris, 1956), 114-15.


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explanation. (The best we can do, I suppose, is to investigate the almost incredible evolutionary history of these accidents . . .)5 On such a view, the question of the intelligibility of nature is an illegitimate pseudo-problem—a forbidden fruit at which sensible minds should not presume to nibble. We must simply rest content with the fact itself, realizing that any attempt to explain it is foredoomed to failure because of the inappropriateness of the very project. Surely, however, such an approach is highly problematic. Eminent authorities to the contrary notwithstanding, the question of nature's intelligibility through natural science is not only interesting and important, but is surely also one which we can in principle hope to answer in a more or less sensible way. The present discussion, at any rate, is predicated on the supposition that this issue needs and deserves a strong dose of demystification. To be sure, when one presses the question 'Why does mathematics apply to reality?' the logical theorist seems to have a ready answer. He says: 'Mathematics must apply to reality. Mathematical propositions are strictly conceptual truths. Accordingly, they hold of this world because they hold of every possible world.' But this response misses the point of present concerns. Admittedly, the truths of pure mathematics obtain in and of every possible world. But they do so only because they are strictly hypothetical and descriptively empty—wholly uncommitted on the substantive issues of the world's operations. Their very conceptual status means that these propositions are beside the point of present purpose. It is not the a priori truth of pure mathematics that concerns us, its ability to afford truths of reason. Rather, what is at issue is the empirical applicability of mathematics, its pivotal role in framing the a posteriori contingent truths of lawful fact that render nature's ways amenable to reason. After all, it is perfectly clear that the fact that pure mathematics obtains within a world does not mean that this world's laws have to be characterizable in relatively straightforward mathematical terms. It does not mean that nature's operations have to be congenial to mathematics and graspable in terms of simple, neat, elegant, and rationally accessible formulas. In short, it does not 5

K. R. Popper, Objective Knowledge (Oxford, 1972), 28.

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mean that the world must be mathematically tractable in being receptive to the sort of descriptive treatment it receives in mathematical physics. How then is one to account for the fact that the world is mathematics-congenial? The answer has to lie in a somewhat complex, two-sided story. The circumstance that X and Y stand in a condition of mutual affinity and consonance (that nature and mathematics are duly coordinated) is a two-sided affair in which both sides must be expected to have a part. For nature to be intelligible to us, there must thus be an alignment that requires co-operation on both sides—hers and ours. The analogy of cryptanalysis is helpful. If X is to break Vs code, there must be due reciprocal alignment. If Xs methods are too crude, too hit-or-miss, he can get nowhere. But even if X is highly intelligent and resourceful, his efforts cannot succeed if Vs procedures are simply beyond his powers. (The cryptanalysts of the seventeenth century, clever though they were, could get absolutely nowhere in applying their investigative instrumentalities to a high-level naval code of World-War-H vintage; the phenomena are too complex for their methods to gain any purchase-hold upon them.) If we are to understand nature— if there is to be a cognitive compatability between these two parties—then both parties, both nature's ways and man's mathematicizing, must be duly co-operative. Let us trace out this line of thought.

11.2

'OUR' SIDE

Man's side of this bilateral story is relatively straightforward. After all, homo sapiens is an integral part of nature—wired into its scheme of things as an intrinsic component thereof. So, the kind of mathematics that we are going to devise is pretty much bound to be the kind that is applicable. Our experience is inevitably an experience of nature. (That after all is what 'experience' is—our intelligence-mediated reaction to the world's stimulating impacts upon us.) So the kind of mathematics that we humans are motivated to develop in the light of our experience is bound to be the kind that is applicable to nature as we experience it. The mathematics of an astronomically remote civilization whose experiential resources differ from ours would surely be substantially


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different from the mathematics we humans ourselves know and love. Their dealings with quantity might be entirely a-numerical— purely comparative, for example, rather than quantitative. Especially if their environment is not amply endowed with solid objects or stable structures congenial to measurement—if, for example, they were jellyfish-like creatures swimming about in a soupy sea—their 'geometry' could be something rather strange, largely topological, say, and geared to flexible structures rather than fixed sizes or shapes. Digital thinking might go undeveloped, while certain sorts of analogue reasoning might be highly refined. In particular, if the intelligent aliens were a diffuse assemblage of units comprising wholes in ways that allowed of overlaps, then social concepts might become so paramount in their thinking that nature would throughout be viewed in fundamentally social categories, with those aggregates we think of as physical structures contemplated by them in social terms. Communicating by some sort of 'telepathy' based upon variable odours, or otherwise 'exotic' signals, they might, for example, devise a complex theory of empathetic thought-wave transmittal through an ideaferous aether. The sort of 'structures' that underlie their mathematicizing might be very different indeed. Mathematics is the theory of imaginable structures. And 'imaginable' here is a matter of imaginable by a nature-evolved and nature-embraced creature. Admittedly, mathematics is not a natural science but a theory of hypothetical possibilities developed by theorists who care not one whit for 'applications'. Nevertheless, those structural possibilities with which a 'mathematics' deals are possibilities as conceived by creatures—by beings who do their possibility conceiving with a nature-evolved and nature-implanted mind and whose dealings with possibilities are conditioned by the fact that some of our imaginative projections are and others are not congenial to nature as we experience it. It is thus not surprising that the sort of mathematics we contrive is the sort we find to be applicable to the conceptualization of nature. Our human intellectual mechanisms—mathematics included— fit nature because they are themselves a product of nature's operations as reflected in the cognitive processes of an intelligent creature that possesses its intelligence thanks to the course of its emergence through evolutionary processes. Our mathematics is destined to be congenial to nature because it is itself the product of

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a natural process; it fits nature because it reflects the way we ourselves are placed within nature as integral constituents thereof, as products of an evolutionary process proceeding within nature's realm. The intellectual resources we devise in coming to grips with the world—in transmuting sensory interaction with nature into intelligible experience—are themselves mechanisms of adjustment. It is no more surprising that our mind can grasp nature's ways than it is surprising that our eyes can accommodate nature's rays or our stomach nature's food. Evolutionary pressure can take credit for the lot. Still, it could perhaps be the case that we do well only in point of cognitive adjustment in the immediate local micro-environment that defines our particular limited ecological niche. The possibility is still open that we do not really do all that well on a wider scale— that we get hold of only a small localized part of a large and remote whole. Thus, man's own one-sided contribution to the matter of nature's intelligibility cannot be the whole story. For, even if we do reasonably well in terms of our own evolutionary requirements, this might be very inadequate in the larger scheme of things. Nature's wider receptiveness to our cognitive efforts— that nature is substantially amenable to reason and not just somewhat (and perhaps marginally) so remains to be demonstrated. To clarify this issue we must therefore move on to contemplate nature's contribution to the bilateral mind-nature relationship.

11.3

NATURE'S SIDE

If an inquiring being who is placed within nature and forms mathematicized conceptions and beliefs about it on the basis of physical interaction with it is to achieve a reasonably appropriate grasp of its workings, then nature must also do its part. Obviously, first, it must permit the evolution of inquiring beings. Moreover, it must present them with an environment that affords sufficiently stable patterns to make coherent 'experience' possible—enabling them to derive appropriate information from structured interactions. Finally, the fruits of this experience must be capable of mathematical representation. What thus needs to be shown for present purposes is that the employment of mathematics can


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provide intelligent inquirers with an adequate and accurate grasp of nature's ways. The applicative success of mathematics involves a two-sided story whose second component—the 'co-operativeness' of nature—must also be addressed. Nature's own contribution to the issue of the mathematical intelligibility of nature must be the availability of a relatively simple law structure—one that encodes so simple a set of regularities that even a community of inquirers possessed of only rather moderate capabilities can be expected to achieve a fairly good grasp of them. But how can one possibly establish that nature simply 'must' afford a fairly straightforward law structure? Are there any fundamental reasons why the world that we investigate by the use of our mathematically informed intelligence should operate on relatively simple principles that are inherently accessible to mathematics? There are indeed! A world in which such intelligence evolves at all will have to be a world that is congenial to mathematics. The argument to this farreaching conclusion goes roughly as follows. For evolution to occur at all, even the humblest of creatures that possess only the most rudimentary anatomy (say, snails and algae) must so operate that certain types of stimuli (patterns of recurrently discernible impacts) call forth appropriate corresponding types of responses. Such creatures can detect a pattern in their natural environment and react to it in a way that works to their advantage in evolutionary terms. And this means that nature must be cooperative in a certain very particular way—it must be stable enough and regular enough and structured enough for there to be 'appropriate responses' to natural events that can be 'learned' by creatures. If such 'appropriate responses' are to develop, nature must provide 'suitable stimuli'. Accordingly, there must be structured patterns of occurrence in nature that even simple, single-celled creatures—the most rudimentary proto-intelligences —can embody in their make-up and reflect in their modus operandi. The world must encapsulate straightforwardly 'learnable' patterns of occurrence in its operating structures—relatively simple laws, in other words. The existence of such learnable 'structures' of natural occurrence means that there must be some useful role for mathematics, which, after all, is the abstract and systematic theory of 'structure in general'.

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Moreover, a world in which intelligence evolves by anything like standard evolutionary processes must be one in which the exercise of intelligence affords an (at least modest) evolutionary advantage to its practitioners. For intelligence to develop at all, it must give an 'evolutionary edge' to its possessors. A world that did not comport itself 'as if an intelligent being designed it—which did not exhibit numerous simple patterns and regularities that can bring grist to the mill of intelligence—would simply not be a world in which organic, let alone intelligent, life could develop by evolutionary means. And so, we may conclude that a world in which intelligence can develop by evolutionary processes must be a world amenable to understanding in mathematical terms.6 A world in which evolutionary processes engender high intelligence must in many respects be a highly intelligible world: it must provide food for the mind even as it must provide food for the body. It lies in the nature of evolution that a world in which mathematicizing intelligence emerges must be a world in which intelligent beings find grist for their mill in endeavouring to 'understand' the world. It thus cannot properly be seen as surprising that mathematicizing intelligence arrived at through evolution should be substantially successful in comprehending nature's ways.7 The development of life and, thereafter, of intelligence in the world may or may not be inevitable; the existence of intelligent creatures in the world may or may not be surprising in itself and as such. But, once they are there, and once we realize that they got there thanks to evolutionary processes, it can no longer be seen as surprising that their efforts at characterizing the world in mathematical terms should be substantially successful. An intelligence-containing world whose intelligent creatures came by this intelligence through evolutionary means must be so structured as to be substantially intelligible by mathematical means. Only if we take a view reminiscent of Plato's Timaeus, and locate mind outside nature herself—as an external agency acting upon it from an external vantage-point—will it be surprising that 6 Conversations with Gerald Massey have helped in clarifying this part of the argument. Nothing, of course, follows about the completeness of this intelligibility, which could certainly be very partial. Nothing in our discussion eliminates the prospect that there is a continuum of complexity in nature's laws and that we have only got at the simplest ones so far.


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mind should understand nature, that these two parties should be so well attuned to one another. But a mind that is an integral part of nature, and that came to be so through the process of natural selection, is a mind that must be in a position to understand nature on her own terms. On this line of deliberation, then, nature is mathematicsamenable not just in that it has laws (is a cosmos), but in that it affords a variety of relatively simple laws, and it has these relatively simple laws because if it did not it just would not be a potential environment for intelligent life. Given that we intelligent creatures are here, and got here by evolutionary means, the world must behave 'as if it were planned as a theatre of operations for rational calculation. If it were not so, the world would not provide a stage on which evolutionary processes could bring intelligence forth. The sort of processes on whose basis alone information transmission can issue in evolutionary development would be absent. The strictly hypothetical character of the preceding line of reasoning must be recognized. It does not maintain that nature's modus operandi has to be simple enough to admit of elegant mathematical representation by virtue of some sort of transcendental necessity. Rather, what it maintains is the purely conditional thesis that if intelligent creatures are to emerge in the world by evolutionary processes, then the world must be mathematicsamenable. And it must be stressed that this conditional story is quite enough for present purposes. For the question we face is why we humans, we intelligent creatures who are present on the world's stage, should be able to understand its operations in terms of our mathematics. The conditional story at issue fully suffices to accomplish this particular job. 8 Three points are thus paramount for the course of these deliberations: 1. Intelligence evolves within a nature that provides for life because it affords living creatures a good way of coming to terms with the world. 8 It is, of course, altogether possible that we should use the knowledge of nature facilitated by mathematicizing intelligence to destroy mankind. (And what price evolutionary advantage then?) But our present concerns relate only to the initiation of mathematics through the deployment of adaptive intelligence. The issue of eschatology, of the ultimate fate of mathematicizing intelligence and its evolutionary advantage in the long run of the future, is immaterial for present purposes.

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2. Once intelligent creatures evolve, their cognitive efforts are likely to have some degree of adequacy because evolutionary pressures align them with nature's ways. 3. It should not be surprising that this alignment eventually produces a substantially effective mathematical physics, because the fundamental structure of the operations of an intelligence-providing nature is bound to be relatively simple. Let us now put the pieces together.The overall question of the intelligibility of nature has two sides: 1. Why is mind so well attuned to nature? 2. Why is nature so well attuned to mind? The preceding discussion has suggested that the answers to these questions are not all that complicated—at least at the level of schematic essentials. In telegraphic brevity, they are simply this: Mind must be attuned to nature because it is an evolved natural product of nature's operations. And nature must be accessible to mind because it must be so if mind is to arise at all. The solution of our problem of the mathematical intelligibility of the real thus roots in the combination.of two considerations: (1) a world which admits of the evolutionary emergence of a (relatively powerful) mode of intelligence must be (relatively) regular and simple in its modus operandi and thus amenable to mathematical characterization, and (2) a sufficiently powerful intelligence will be able to comprehend such a world in mathematical terms. The possibility of a mathematical science of nature is accordingly to be explained by the fact that, in the light of evolution, intelligence and intelligibility must stand in mutual coordination. If mind and nature were too far out of alignment—if mind were too 'unintelligent' for the complexities of nature or nature too complex for the capacities of mind—the two just could not get into step. It would be like trying to rewrite Shakespeare in a rudimentary language with a 500-word vocabulary. We just lose too much important information in such a case. The situation would be akin to trying to keep tabs on a system with ten importantly relevant degrees of freedom with a cognitive mechanism capable of keeping track of four of them. If something like this were the case, mind could not accomplish its evolutionary mission. We had


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best turn to an alignment process that does not take the cognitive route. There may indeed be mysteries in this general area. (Questions like 'Why should it be that life evolved in the world?' and—even more fundamentally—'Why should it be that the world exists at all?' are perhaps candidates.) But, the presently deliberated issue of why nature is intelligible to man, and why this intelligibility should incorporate a mathematically articulable physics, does not qualify as all that mysterious, let alone miraculous. To be sure, the preceding account is highly schematic and demands a great deal of amplification. A long and complex tale must be told about physical and cognitive evolution to fill in the details of the present account. But there is good reason to hope and expect that such a tale can ultimately be told. And this is the pivotal point. Even if one has doubts about particular aspects of the preceding evolutionary story, the fact remains that some such story can provide a perfectly workable answer to the question of why nature's ways are intelligible to us humans in terms of our mathematical instrumentalities. The mere fact that such an account affords a hopeful explanatory prospect shows that the issue need not be painted in the black on black of impenetrable mystery. There is simply no need to join Einstein, Schroedinger, and company in viewing the intelligibility of nature as a miracle and a mystery that passes all human understanding. If we are willing to learn from science itself how nature operates and how man goes about conducting his inquiries into its workings, then we should be able increasingly to remove the shadow of mystery from the problem of how it is that a being of this sort, probing an environment of that type, and doing so by means of those evolutionarily developed cognitive and physical instrumentalities, should be able to arrive at a relatively successful account of how things work in the world. We should eventually be able to see it as plausible and only to be expected that inquiring beings should emerge and survive to project themselves through the corridors of time. We can thus look to science itself for the materials that enable us to understand how natural science is possible. And there is no good reason to expect that it will let us down in this regard.9 9 This discussion draws upon ch. 5, 'The Intelligibility of Nature', of the author's The Riddle of Existence (Lanham, Md, 1984).

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The Rationality of the Real 1 1 . 4 A R E C O G N I T I O N OF LIMITS

It must be stressed, however, that nothing in the preceding discussion should be construed to assert that the extent of nature's amenability to the probes of mind is anything but limited. We can sometimes come to know the truth about the world's modus operandi, and perhaps in some contexts even nothing but the truth, but certainly not the whole truth. Based as they are on appeals to evolutionary considerations, the deliberations set out here can go no further than to show that we can achieve effective knowledge of the world in various matters that 'concern' us in one way or another—that in certain, particularly relevant respects nature must be accessible to the probes of mind. Nothing can be inferred from this about the overall extent of our knowledge. We cannot conclude from the apparent adequacy of our knowledge in certain limited domains (i.e., within those limited parametric ranges of temperature, velocity, pressure, etc., over which we can monitor nature's processes) that our knowledge of the world's processes is adequate overall. Nor can we infer from the statistical adequacy of our information for our purposes and interests to its unfailing correctness over an unrestricted range. The very fact that our knowledge of the world must be built up on the basis of interactions with it—that extrapolation from the perceived to the yet undiscerned is always involved—means that in principle the possibility of surprises can never be ruled out. On the contrary, the history of science clearly exhibits a continuing succession of revolutionary surprises. Such deliberations indicate that the real is only imperfectly rational—only partially open to cognitive penetration by realityimplanted intelligences. Considerations of theory and the lessons of experience combine to imply that the extent to which reality cooperates with the demands of rationality is emphatically limited.

11.5

A 'PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON'?

TWO very different versions of a 'principle of sufficient reason' can be invoked to implement the idea of the rationality of the real that


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is at issue in nature's intelligibility: 1. Whenever p is indeed so in nature, there will be a 'good reason'—namely an operative physical cause—that produces it and thus leads to its being so rather than otherwise. 2. Whenever we say that/? is so, there should be a 'good reason' —namely an operative rational ground—that authorizes it and thus justifies us in saying that it is so rather than otherwise. Principle 1—the traditional 'law of causality'—is of course eminently problematic. The discovery of an increasingly substantial range of stochastic phenomena in nature has undermined it severely. Principle 2, however, is something else again—a merely methodological rather than substantive principle. And this weaker principle is eminently plausible. For, the general principle of practical rationality, 'If you do something, have a good reason for doing it', comes into play to assure 2, seeing that to accept or maintain a contention p is indeed to do something. We cannot flatly say that nature itself is rational. But of course we can—and should!—be rational in what we say about nature. This is not a matter of prejudging the principles on which nature operates, which of course is something that we would have to learn by investigating it. Rather, it is simply a matter of how we are to proceed in conducting our own affairs—our own inquiries about nature. Such an approach does not prejudge the 'rationality' of the real as a matter of substantive fact, but merely reflects a determination to proceed rationally in the conduct of our own business—our cognitive business included. And of course such a procedural process does not of itself prejudice the outcome. The features of the inquiry process do not project on to the objects of inquiry. Knowledge need not share the features of its objects: to speak of a sober study of inebriation or a dispassionate analysis of passions is not a contradiction in terms. A rational study of irrational component is perfectly possible. The rational study of nature could discover its essential irrationality—at least in theory, though not in fact if our preceding deliberations hold good. In sum, then, there is no need to postulate the 'rationality of the real' in order to validate rationality in our own proceedings. Cognitive rationality can and should stand on its own feet in the

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context of our inquiries. It does not require the sustaining prop of a metaphysical rationality-in-nature postulate that pictures nature itself—rather than our picture thereof—as being the product of a creative intelligence.

12 Rationality and Humanity

(1) The presumption that people act rationally is standard in the explanation of human dealings. This presumption is not only convenient in explaining people's actions but provides the foundation for their social co-ordination with one another. (2) Yet, while we humans are by nature rational animals, rational comportment is certainly not inevitable for us. People are not always rational—non-rational thought and action are plainly commonplace phenomena in human life. (3) Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding, weakness of will is possible: recognizing the better, people can yet do the worse. We often can act contrary to reason; the salient fact is not that people are rational, but that they ought to be. (4) Our commitment to rationality roots in an ontological obligation inherent in our dedication to the task of selfrealization through the full development of our potentialities. Rationality is thus required of us because it reflects an essential aspect of our very nature. SYNOPSIS

12.1 PEOPLE AS RATIONAL AGENTS: THE PRESUMPTION OF RATIONALITY

Humanity may not be important for rationality—we humans may well be only one of many sorts of rational creatures on the universe's wider stage—perhaps even a relatively non-standard one. But, rationality is crucial to humanity, an integral part of what defines us as the sort of creature we are—or take ourselves to be. The claim to rationality is a crucial aspect of our self-image. Of all our characteristics it is the most central and important. Does man have reason or does man merely think he has reason? The question is almost academic: it just does not matter all that much in the final analysis. What matters primarily is exactly that we do and must think ourselves to be rational—that this capacity is central in our self-definition. This circumstance that we invoke

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Rationality and Humanity

reason to define ourselves as the beings we take ourselves to be is quite enough to give the concept of rationality its central place in the scheme of things. Yet, why fix on reason as our definitive trait? Why not another characteristically human capacity like imagination or foresight or worriment or deceitfulness or some such? Essentially, because reason is the crossroads where all these characteristic attributes come together. Either these other capacities are essential resources for rationality (like imagination or foresight), or the capacity for reason is involved in their operations (like worry or deceit). All of the 'higher' capabilities characteristic of man are bound up in one way or another with his capacity for reason. But are we humans really all that rational—might we not well use that intelligence of ours to destroy ourselves. Certainly. But consider. Wolves are never sinful; only a creature capable of moral action can act immorally. Similarly, plants are never foolish; only a creature that has the capacity for intelligent thinking can act unintelligently. There is thus a crucial divider between having the capacity for intelligent (rational) action and exercising this capacity intelligently (rationally). The very fact that we can use our intelligence unintelligently—self-destructively, for example—betokens our status as rational agents. In principle, of course, rationality is not an exclusively human characteristic. Other kinds of creatures may well be rational—if not here on earth, then elsewhere. But then the capacities that they must have to qualify as rational are just exactly those we ourselves lay claim to: intelligence (the ability to acquire knowledge through inductive learning and to process it through discursive, reason-governed thought) and free-will (the capacity for decision and action in the light of evaluation on the basis of information).1 To recognize someone as a rational being is to ascribe to him a capacity for the intelligence-guided pursuit of duly evaluated goals. This is an attribute that we standardly grant others—even as we wish them to grant it to us. It is bound up with the view that human beings as such have certain rights and claims, that by their very nature they have a peculiar status as rational agents (and morally responsible agents as well). In considering people's actions, we generally give them credit 1

Cf. Jonathan Bennett, Rationality (London, 1964).


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for rationality, proceeding on the basis of a presumption of rationality with respect to our fellows. In the first instance—in the absence of any evidence to the contrary—we proceed on the supposition that people do what they do on the basis of reasons, granting them the benefit of the doubt in point of rationality. We take the stance that there is an explanation on the basis of good reasons as to why they proceed as they do—that they act as they do under the impression that some good will come of it, some benefit for themselves or others. When asked to explain why someone did something, it suffices that we establish that this was the rationally appropriate thing for them to do—at any rate, in the absence of indications that throw their rationality into question. Only as a reluctant last resort do we judge that someone has proceeded on the basis of forces or motives outside the range of their rational control. Thus here, as elsewhere, a presumption of normalcy prevails. Realizing full well that people are not always rational, we find that they (fortunately) are so generally and ordinarily, and feel free to proceed on this basis as an operating reason. In the ordinary course of things we grant people the benefit of any doubt and treat them as rational agents in the absence of convincing counter-indications. This presumption of rationality is not just a matter of generosity, but one of self-interest too. For it affords us an important laboursaving device by allowing us to explain people's actions simply by noting that they were, in the circumstances, rational. In so far as people's actions are of a sort that can be accounted for on principles of practical rationality, we may rest content and pose no further explanatory questions. Accordingly, we need not in general raise questions about someone's motives when they do the rationally indicated thing. In the ordinary course of events—when things go 'normally'—no further special account of the matter is called for. Inquiry can rest and explanation cease in the assurance that things are as they can be expected to be. In giving people the benefit of any doubt in point of rationality, we save ourselves an immense amount of explanatory labour. The assumption that others behave rationally is very useful in another regard. For, people need to be predictable to one another to coexist in fruitful interaction—we need to make ourselves intelligible to others to co-ordinate our activities. Thus, by demanding that people act rationally, and in conforming our own

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actions to this expectation, we facilitate the alignment of human actions. (We cannot align on systematically unintelligent choices because the possibilities become unmanageable.) Even if the presumption of rationality did nothing else beyond rendering this service of making our activities intelligible to one another, it would be eminently worthwhile.2 Nor does explanatory convenience tell the whole story. A world in which we cannot communicate and collaborate with others is not a very safe world for us and our kind. And so, evolutionary processes dictate our impetus to increasingly complex communication and collaboration. The presumption of rationality is a crucial aspect of social interaction, since in its absence the basis of communication and collaboration is annihilated. We cannot communicate or collaborate with others in the absence of a supposition of (a fair degree of) rationality on their part. Its highly practical nature accordingly contributes importantly to validating the presumption of rationality. 12.2

ON F A I L I N G TO DO THE R A T I O N A L T H I N G

Are people by nature irrational? Recent psychological studies have sought to establish with experimental precision that people are generally inclined to reason in inappropriate ways. One investigation,3 for example, concludes that people systematically commit the well-known fallacy of denying the antecedent by reasoning: If p, then q Not-p Therefore: Not-q But, it is far from clear that an error is actually committed in the cases at issue. For, people often use 'If p, then q' in everyday discourse as abbreviation for 'if but only if p then q'. ('If you have a ticket, they'll let you board', 'If you pass the course, you'll get four credits'.) What seems to happen in the cases at issue is not 2

Cf. the discussion at the close of sect. 2 of ch. 3 above. L. Rips, 'Reasoning as a Central Intellective Ability', in R. J. Steinberg (ed.), Advances in the Study of Human Intelligence, ii (Hillsdale, 1984), 105-47 (see esp. pp. 134-7). 3


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misreasoning, but mere conclusion-jumping by tacitly supplying that 'missing' inverse. Again, various investigators have suggested that people generally commit various fallacies in probabilistic reasoning.4 For example, they incline to the 'gambler's fallacy' of judging that in repeated trials an outcome that has not occurred in a long time is therefore the more likely to arise in the near future. But, observe that this can be seen not as a misinference but simply as a—potentially mistaken—association of the phenomenon at issue with those which (like an animal's need for sleep or food) involve a saturation process of some sort .Thus, the issue may well be one of a mistaken factual supposition rather than one of fallacious reasoning. Or again, experimenters maintain that statistically untrained subjects tend to overestimate the probabilities of conjunctive outcomes and to underestimate those of disjunctive ones. In particular, subjects often judge the probability of a conjunction to be greater than that of one of the conjuncts.5 For example, when subjects are presented with a description of a certain object (for example, as two-bladed), they may deem it quite probable that the object is a pair of scissors, but rather improbable that it is a cutting implement (which, if it is indeed a pair of scissors, the object of course will also be). But such misjudgements can also be accounted for as a matter of misinterpretation of the issue rather than one of misreasoning. The error at issue is presumably better diagnosed as reflecting a (perhaps unwarranted) preoccupation with the inverse-likelihood than as a failure in probability calculation. For one systemic weakness of all such claims of a general penchant to fallacious inference lies in the enthymematic character of much human reasoning. We frequently make substantive 4

See, for example, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahnemann, 'Judgments of and by Representativeness', in Daniel Kahnemann, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky (eds.), Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 87, and also these authors' 'Belief in the Law of Small Numbers', ibid., p. 24, as well as their earlier paper 'Judgment under Uncertainty, Heuristics and Biases', Science, 125 (1974), 124-31, and cf. L. D. Phillips and W. Edwards, 'Conservatism in Simple Probability Inference Tasks', Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72 (1966), 346-57. 5 See M. Bar-Hillel, 'On the Subjective Probability of Compound Events', Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, vol. 9 (1973), 396-406. See also R. E. Nisbett and L. Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1980), 146-7.

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assumptions about how things stand in the world on the basis of experience or of inculcation, and the incorrect conclusions people draw can stem from these assumptions rather than any error of inferential reasoning. After all, any mere inference, however fallacious, can be restored to validity by the addition of suitable supplementing premisses. To construe the data of these interesting experimental studies to mean that people are systematically programmed to fallacious processes of reasoning—rather than merely indicating that they are inclined to a variety of (occasionally questionable) substantive suppositions—is a very questionable step.6 For, when psychologists maintain that the commonplace and normal reasoning processes of people violate the logical and mathematical norms of standard rationality, they overlook the fact that their data can be explained, equally satisfactorily, by supposing that people incline to certain (often perhaps incorrect) factual suppositions about the issues with which they are confronted. But, in any case, even if the psychological data did indeed convincingly show that the inherent 'natural' tendencies of human inferential reasoning were in some respects systematically fallacious, this would not serve to undermine the importance of rationality in human affairs. (After all, the importance of measurement could not be undermined if human vision systematically distorted the relative size of certain objects as in the Mueller-Leier optical illusion.) The value of intelligence would not be diminished if it emerged that people generally proceed unintelligently in certain matters. Only someone who naively expected 'the real' (as reflected in human praxis) also to be highly rational could find this shocking. The key point is that the significance of rationality does not, ultimately, lie in its role as a descriptive characterization of human proceedings (in how people do function) but rather in its normative role, as an indication of how people should function in the best interests of their cognitive and practical concerns. Rationality, like morality, is of normative bearing, concerned with the correct, proper, intelligent way of doing things, and not with the merely usual or customary course of things. The norms of 6 For a cogent analysis of this situation see L. J. Cohen, The Dialogue of Reason (Oxford, 1986), 157-92. On the specifically probabilistic issues see the author's Forbidden Knowledge (Dordrecht, 1987), 58-77.


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rationality—like those of morality—are in no way undermined or invalidated by the fact that people violate them. Failures of rationality deserve closer consideration. With the ancients, we continue to conceptualize man as the rational animal. Yet, we do so not because people indeed are always rational, but because they generally have the capacity for reason, and most of them actually exercise this capacity some of the time. Our rationality thus exerts only a statistical impetus: people often, but by no means inevitably, proceed as rationality requires. The presumption of rationality is defeasible and defeatable. We know full well that people's actions can derive from sources quite different from the rational impetus of good reasons: passion ('getting carried away'), suggestibility ('the influence of the crowd'), loss of control (through alcohol or drugs), or the like. To be sure, bitter experience teaches us that all people are sometimes irrational and some people usually so. Realists have long recognized—and psychologists insisted—that the dispassionate consideration of objective factors and the intelligent consideration of real interests are less prominent and powerful determinants of human belief, action, and evaluation than has often been thought—or than people are generally happy to acknowledge. We have at our disposal a whole armoury of special person-characterizing terms (irascible, jealous, suggestible, etc.) and of actcharacterizing qualifications ('out of spite', 'accidentally', 'by a whim') to mark departures from rationality. And a vast descriptive taxonomy is at our disposal to account for peoples' straying from the path of reason: anger, petulance, wilfulness, fear, ambition, and so on. The rational has diverse contrasts; it can be distinguished from what is a-rational, in being indifferent to reason, simply not concerned with it; irrational, in going against reason; extra-rational, in going beyond or outside the range of reason. Natural forces are a-rational; foolish and unreasonable people are often irrational; mystics and visionaries comport themselves in ways that are extra-rational in proceeding by 'purely intuitive' means when in circumstances where reason is rather silent than

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negative. In particular, it warrants note that the a-rational is one thing and the irrational another. One can only be actually irrational if one has the capacity for reason and proceeds to neglect, misuse, or abuse it. The violations of rationality that are at issue in irrationality generally fall into three main groups: 1. the incorrect assessment of ends: adopting ends unsuited to one's needs or interests 2. the inadequate management of means to ends: adopting acts geared to means unsuited to ones ends 3. the seriously inappropriate allocation of resources: investing one's limited resources of time, effort, attention, money, or the like, in such a way that some interests are grossly overemphasized at the expense of others that are no less important. Even with otherwise intelligent individuals, it is by no means the case that actual decisions are always, or even mostly, for the best. Nothing, alas, is easier and more common than failing to do the best thing—even the best as seen by oneself. Unfortunately, we often 'see the better and do the worse,' doing what we want rather than what we judge to be best. Man is a frail creature. We are too lazy, too feckless, too careless to take proper care for what we ought to do—for what is good for us rather than what we want. Self-deception can all too easily becloud rationality, letting selfindulgence or convenience or wishful thinking get distortingly in the way of what we ought to do. Irrationality is pervasive in human affairs. While all (normal) people are to be credited with the capacity for reason, they frequently do not exercise it well. No doubt every human action has a motive of some sort, but this is not always a reason—not even a poor one. Not every action is geared to the facilitation of some putative good:—we do some things out of anger or sheer frustration or 'impulse' (spontaneous wilfulness). Indeed, various of our actions lack reasons of any sort, let alone good ones. There are certainly alternatives to using reason in adopting beliefs, values, or actions. All the same, the fact remains that most of us see ourselves as committed to rationality. We are rational much of the time—many or most of us do frequently apply our intelligence to guide us in


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what we do by indicating what, in light of the available information, is for the best. Rationality thus exerts a powerful impetus upon how we conduct our practical affairs. And this circumstance endows rationality with an ideological and even political dimension. For, an element of uncertainty pervades all human affairs, and in uncertain situations reason counsels prudence, care, and tentativity. It calls for proceeding with 'calculated caution', rejecting drastic and implausible remedies and untested measures in favour of low-risk, 'pragmatic' approaches. It distrusts drastic innovations proposed on the basis of abstract general principles alone, and calls for trial, experimentation, and inquiry into the modus operandi of things. It demands care and moderation, and reserves drastic remedies for drastic situations where more cautious alternatives are not available. It holds to 'the middle of the road' and counsels empiricism and pragmatism, discouraging 'leaps in the dark' and incalculable risks. The caution 'One step at a time!' is generally reason's motto. There is something rather dull and unexciting about the life of reason. (Rationality is a middleage virtue, out of tune with both the fervent ardour of impatient adolescence and the inflexible conservatism of old age.) And so the call of unreason or anti-reason—of 'noophobia'— will find advocates in every era and every society. There will ever be those who have no patience for the life of cautious inquiry, experimental gradualism, and pragmatic accommodation to things that manifestly need improvement but cannot be mended overnight. The ways of reason are accordingly anathema to advocates of Utopian revisions and radically innovative leaps in the dark. And so, at the political level, in particular, rationality cuts against the tendencies which find expression in fascism, anarchism, and communism—drastically revisionary ideologies that ride roughshod over any suggestion of compromise with the prevailing realities of the human condition within the existing limitations of space and time. The devotees of such approaches reject reason in favour of the siren call of 'natural instinct', 'the spirit of the time', 'historical inevitability', or whatever. All reason can do is to shake its head in frustrated recognition of a facet of human reality that limits its own potential for amelioration. It recognizes and accepts, however reluctantly, the melancholy but significant truism that man's capacity for reason does not mean that people usually act in a rational way. The bearing of rationality is normative, geared less

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to the descriptive portrayal of what agents do than to the evaluative analysis of what they ought to do. It is important, in particular, to distinguish between (1) the criteriological question of determining what is the rationally appropriate thing to do in particular circumstances, and (2) the psychological question of the sorts of motives or drives or dispositions that may impel people towards (or prevent them from) doing the rationally appropriate thing. And it is clear that the first of these questions is more fundamental than the second and conceptually prior to it. 7 We cannot sensibly deal with (2) at the level of concrete particulars until we have resolved (1)—that is, we have no prospect of addressing the issue of why someone fails to do the rational thing on some occasion until we have in hand the means of settling what the rational thing to do in those circumstances actually is. And here reasoning in the normative/ evaluative order is paramount. The theory of practical reasoning is not concerned with techniques of self-management as such, but only with identifying what is the rational thing to do. It issues in judgements, addressing the criteriological problem of what we are well advised to do, and leaving the rest to us. The matter of whether an individual is willing to implement such a determination in particular circumstances lies outside the domain of practical reasoning. The object of practical reason is to enable us to figure out what it is that we are well advised to do. The task of getting us to do it is something else again—a matter not primarily of reasoning but of the psychology of self-motivation and self-management. Different issues are at stake.

1 2 . 3 AGAINST THE GREEKS

The thesis that a freely acting agent does what he decides to do is an empty tautology, given what is at issue in 'free agency'. But such an agent does not necessarily do that which he believes to be right and proper for him to do. People not only fail to act for the best, they often even fail to act for the putative best—the best as 7 It thus seems odd that the interesting recent book by David Pears on Motivated Irrationality (Oxford, 1984) concerns itself solely with the second issue and ignores the first altogether.


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they themselves see it. It is a fact of life that people often set about doing things they recognize full well to be just stupid. To be sure, philosophers since Socrates have often said that free agents only do what they deem to be for the best. But, to say this is to take too naive a view of human perversity. The scholastic maxim that we seek only what we deem to be good (nihil appetimus nisi sub ratione boni) does not hold always and automatically for people in general, but only for rational people. Much of the time many of us opt for what we want rather than for that we deem best for us. Accordingly, there is no logical inconsistency or incompatibility between the contentions: 1. X realizes that on balance (with everything taken into account) A is the best (optimally advantageous, most sensible, rational, reasonable) thing for him to do. and 2. X fails to do A, and wilfully chooses to do something else instead. There is no contradiction here, and no paradox—unless we are labouring under the mistaken impression that people inevitably 'must' do what they deem the best (most advantageous and beneficial). Of course people often do not do this at all—only rational people do. All too frequently, people in fact simply do what they choose to do—what they want to do in preference to what they deem best (to what they in reflective moments think they should do). This difference between what they ought to do because it is in their best interest (be it short or long term) and what they merely want to do is a crucial one for rationality. The pivotal issue for rationality is what ought to be done—and here, as elsewhere, there is a potential gap between is and ought—between the actual and the appropriate. Man is a rational animal only in that we are capable of reason—but we certainly do not always heed reason's call. The pivotal fact is not that people are rational, but that they ought to be. Actual preference must accordingly be distinguished from rational (duly value-guided) preference: what we want is one thing and what we take to be best is another. But, Aristotle is quite mistaken when he takes this distinction to run parallel to the

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distinction between appearance (seeming) and reality.8 In holding that what we actually want is always the apparent good—the option we deem (perhaps mistakenly) to be the best—Aristotle gives us too much credit. Only the ideally rational man chooses something automatically when he evaluates it as the best; the rest of us often choose things simply because we want them, recognizing full well that they may not in fact be all that good for us. People are not always rational—non-rational thought and action are plainly commonplace phenomena in human life, Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding. All too often we recognize the better but do the worse, letting wilfulness override judgement. Wrong choice is not necessarily a matter of weakness of will—of the will's infirmity in implementing the mind's recognition of the good; it can be a matter of perversity of will as well—of the will's acting in acknowledged contravention of the mind's recognition of the good. Philosophers still sometimes follow the Greeks who generally adopted Socrates view that a person is moved to act only by all he currently deems to be good—that no one ever knowingly does what he at the time takes to be the wrong thing to do. But to take this line is deeply problematic. For it claims that choice always issues from putative choice-worthiness and always lays claim to rational legitimacy. And (to re-emphasize) this holds only for strictly rational people, and not for people in general. Practical rationality accordingly will often not issue in action as such—one's correctly figuring out the appropriate thing to do through rational calculation does not assure one's doing it. In this regard, Aristotle, who saw action (praxis) as constituting the 'conclusion' of practical reasoning,9 was quite wrong. The conclusion of a practical inference, like the conclusion of any other inference, is a proposition—namely a thesis to the effect that a certain action or course of action is the appropriate thing to do (is optimal, proper, well advised, rationally mandatory, or some such). Practical reasoning is a matter not just of acting but of thinking—of deliberating, of figuring out what is to be done. An action as such may implement a course of practical reasoning, but 8 'For the apparent good is the object of desire (imBv/ua: appetite) and the real good is the object of rational choice (/SOUATJOW).' Metaphysics, xii. 1072a28-30. 9 De motu animalium, bk. vii. 701al-16. Cf. John Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), ch. 1.


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does not constitute it (either in whole or in part). With rational deliberation, as elsewhere, a gap may arise between theory and practice, opinion and deed. Not only external interventions but also such internal 'interventions' as passion, fear, or fecklessness can intervene to abort implementing the results of a course of practical reason. The usual linkage between cognition and attempted action—between accepting 'I ought (everything considered) to do A' and actually proceeding to do A—may be short-circuited. This can happen not only through outside interference (through prevention by others or by circumstances), but also through inside interference (through blockage by the force majeure of passion or wilfulness). 'I ought to do A' is a matter of judgemental appraisal—of the insight of rational reflection that (in the circumstances) A is the preferable thing to do. But there is a gap between preferability and preference, between acknowledging that preferring A is the reasonable and appropriate thing to do, and actually preferring A. For, reason may simply fail to prevail in a conflict with its competitors—it may be 'overruled', as it were, by such forces as passion, wilfulness, hedonism, and the like. There is no contradiction, no anomaly, in saying 'He realized perfectly well that A was the best thing for him to do, but still chose to do something else.' To be sure, we generally like to see ourselves as rational—to view what we believe as belief-worthy and what we want as wantworthy (that is, preferable). But, wishes are not horses, and things are not effected through our thinking that it would be nice for them to be so. It is de facto preference that is linked to (attempted) action, not de jure preferability. And the step from preference to preferability can only be accomplished under the supposition that the agent proceeds rationally, that he actively implements in action what rationality indicates in reflection—a supposition that is often plausible but by no means always true. The person who cannot 'bring himself to believe' something that he realizes to be true, or who cannot 'bring himself to do' something that he realizes to be optimal, or who cannot 'bring himself to prefer' something that he realizes to be preferable, does not commit an error of reasoning—on the contrary, his reasoning is (by hypothesis) perfectly in order. (The discrepancy at issue would disappear were this not so.) His problems lie on the side of the will rather than on that of the intellect—albeit generally in the

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direction of perversity rather than in that of the infirmity of Aristotelian 'weakness of will' (aKpam'a). However, this sort of failure is immaterial from the standpoint of practical reasoning, which, after all, relates rather to the examining of conclusions than to the issue of their implementation. The 'irrationality' at issue lies not in an inadequacy of reasoning but in a failure to maintain coherence between thought and action. If, realizing that A is the rational thing to do, you choose nevertheless to do an incompatible action A' instead—be it out of wilfulness or perversity or weakness of will or whatever—this circumstance beings questions of the psychology of motivation upon the scene. You are an irrational agent all right, but the irrationality is one of implementation rather than inference. Your failure will not necessarily reflect on your capacity to perform practical reasoning. Quite the reverse! If you did not realize that A is the rational thing to do in the circumstances, the problem is mitigated—for then doing the contrary A' instead would not mark you as irrational. Inability or failure to figure out what the rational thing to do is takes the matter no further than incompetence. The actual irrationality at issue inheres in doing something at variance with an explicit recognition of what the rational thing to do is. Irrationality thus presupposes the ability to accomplish practical reasoning correctly. A creature that lacks this ability cannot be said to behave irrationally, however 'strangely' it may act.

12.4

RATIONALITY AS A D U T Y : O N T O L O G I C A L O B L I G A T I O N AND THE IMPERATIVE TO REASON

Does rationality issue commands or counsels? In the Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas sensibly observed that: 'a commitment implies obligation, whereas a counsel is left to the option of the one to whom.it is given' (Q. 14, a. 1). A command is imperative and definitely binding—its demands are framed in the language of 'you must'. A counsel, by contrast, is advisory and offers a recommendation governed by the formula, 'You are well advised to do it'—its demands are framed in the language of 'you should'. Which is at issue with the declarations of reason? To all appearances the voice of reason recommends rather than commands, and advises rather than obliges, so that rationality is a


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matter of discovering and choosing that which, as best we can tell, optimally conduces to the realization of our overall interests. Doing what reason instructs is in general not a matter of duty—of some sort of obligation. Rather, it is a matter of prudential advisability. The person who violates the standards of rationality simply manages his affairs in a way that is less than fully intelligent, and thereby (in general) damages no one but himself by frustrating the realization of his own best interests. Thus, rationality's injunctions are seemingly matters of recommendation rather than obligation, of counsel rather than requirement. But the matter actually stands otherwise. For we have not only an opportunity but even a duty to be rational. The most fundamental injunction of reason is 'Be rational—act in line with reason's recommendations!' And this fundamental imperative is a command rather than a counsel. But whence does the advice of rationality obtain the imperatival force in virtue of which we ought to do what it indicates? How is it that the advice of reason obtains to deontic force—that one is somehow obliged to do what reason recommends? What is the basis of this 'obligation' to be rational? The answer here lies in the consideration of ontology. The pivot point is the situation of the individual and of the species in the world's scheme of things. The deontic impetus to rationality inheres in our very nature. It is rooted ultimately in the fact that rationality is part and parcel of the capacities that rationally define man as an intelligent agent. The deontic impetus to rationality lies in the basic ontological imperative to make the best of our given opportunities. The binding obligation to be rational inheres in the 'metaphysical' consideration that we 'owe it to reality at large' to realize ourselves as the sort of being we are—to take our proper place in the world's scheme of things. The factors of self-interest and of self-realization contrive to thrust the rationality project upon us as one in which we both self-interestedly should be and properly ought to be involved. We ought to comport ourselves rationally because rationality is an essential part of our self-definition as human persons. Rationality thus represents a crucial aspect of our deepest self-interest— our being able to maintain a proper sense of legitimacy and selfworth by being able to see ourselves as the sorts of creatures we claim to be. Our very identity as beings of the sort we can and should want to be is at stake.

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An ontological or metaphysical imperative to rationality is thus at work. A creature that possesses the capacity for rational agency ought to realize this potential—it ought to act so as to develop itself as a rational being. For, to lose out on such an opportunity to realize the good is simply unintelligent—and thus contrary to the impetus of reason. The obligation to be rational is an ontological obligation that inheres in our capacity for self-development and self-realization—a commitment to the full development of our human potentialities. The imperative to rationality is a matter of the fundamental impetus to make good use of our opportunities for self-development—of doing the best we can with ourselves under the conditions in which we labour. We have here a rationale that grounds obligation in considerations of nature (that is, of a modality of existence)—by its very nature as such, a being that has the capacity for value realization ought to realize it. We here cross the boundary from an is of sorts (that is, of evaluative sorts) to ought. It is through this fundamental ontological imperative that mere 'counsels of reason' are transmuted into commands—commands issued by one side of our nature (the rational) to ourselves in general. We have to do here with an injunction issued by one part of our self to the whole. Our claim to be rational free agents of itself establishes our position in the world's scheme of things, with the result that rationality becomes a matter of duty for us, of ontological obligation. Francis Hutcheson saw morality as a matter of so acting that we can reflectively approve of our own character—of so acting that one need make no excuses for oneself towards oneself. Even so, the fundamental ontological impetus to self-development is a matter of acting in the light of what sort of person one ought to be—of so comporting oneself that one can unhesitantly approve of oneself as being that which one has, through one's own actions, made of oneself. No one is closer to us than our own self (egomet mihi sum proximus), and being on good terms with ourselves is perhaps the most fundamental and basic real and true interest that we have. The ontological imperative to full self-realization—and the rational and moral imperatives it carries in its wake—are simply part and parcel of this fundamental impetus and commandment. Our deepest nature calls on us to be on good terms with ourselves and thus, in turn, requires due heed of our rationality.


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The crux here is the fundamental duty to make good use of the opportunities that come our way to realize ourselves as fully as possible—the fundamental duty of self-realization. In so far as one 'owes' it to anyone at all, one owes this duty to oneself and to 'the world at large' or, at any rate, to the community of conscious intelligences within it.The duty at issue is a duty at once to oneself and to the general scheme of things that brought one forth to develop one's highest potential as the kind of creature one is. It roots in the imperatives: 'Realize your highest potential as the sort of being you are!' and 'Develop yourself for the best as best you can!' This 'fundamental ontological duty of self-realization' appertains to any rational agent whatsoever. Any such agent is in a position—in so far as it actually is an agent—to realize its potentialities for providing good (for enhancing value). Selfrealization is the point of confluence where self-interest and obligation flow together. Human rationality is the product of a prolonged process of evolution. There are many ways for an animal species to make its way in the world—many diverse alternative routes for coping within nature present themselves to biological organisms: the routes of multiplicity, toughness, flexibility, isolation, and others. But, one particularly important pathway is afforded by the route of intelligence, of adapting by the use of brain rather than brawn, of cleverness rather than force, of flexibility rather than specialization. In a competitive, Darwinian world a creature that can understand how things work in its environment and exploit this understanding in action has an evolutionary edge—as the master himself already stressed.There is a promising ecological niche for a creature that makes its way in the world not by sheer tenacity or by tooth and claw, but by intelligence—by co-ordinating its own doings and the world's ways through cognitive foresight. We live and breathe and have our being in a natural environment that is not originally of our making and in which—at any rate—we must forge our own way by the use of our wits. For it is the route of mind, and not the route of tooth and claw, that is our evolutionary destiny. But rationality is not programmed into us like an animal's instinct. We are free creatures. And as such we do well to walk in the paths of reason, not because considerations of necessity dictate that we must, but because considerations of desirability indicate

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that this affords the greatest real advantage for us as the sort of creatures we are. Reason is an imperfect guide—but it is the best we have. The point at issue is a fundamentally axiological one. Accordingly, there is yet another explanation for its centrality in human affairs. As members of the genus Homo sapiens we are creatures that have a capacity for at least partial self-construction —for making ourselves into beings of a certain sort by viewing ourselves in a certain way. In substantial part, we are what we are because of what we claim to be. Persons become persons through their capacity to see themselves as such. In particular, we value ourselves as members of a certain category (species, society, group). We have a sense of belonging—a preparedness to recognize others as instances of 'our type' accompanied by a sense that we ourselves deserve to be so recognized by them in turn. We see ourselves as bearers of value in a community of mutual recognition—as members along with others of an affinity-community of 'people like us'. It is a crucial part of our interests to maintain a proper sense of self-worth in such a setting of reciprocity. An injury to this sense of self-worth is one of the very worst things that can happen to a person. We are then deprived of the self-esteem that goes with membership in a group of which we are pleased and proud to be a part. In eroding one's sense of legitimacy, such an injury undermines one's sense of worth by degrading one where it counts the most—in one's own eyes. After all, we are in crucial part what we are because of what we claim ourselves to be in determining an identity for ourselves as members of a wider community. (The T one takes oneself to be is crucially conditioned by the 'we' of its associates.) The first-person plural ideal of 'we' and 'us' that projects one's own identity into a wider affinity-community is a crucial basis for our sense of worth and self-esteem. A feeling of self-worth is essential to one's sense of legitimacy—one's ability to feel at home in the world. (It is this threat, rather than a fear of its superior weaponry, that makes the idea of contact with a 'superior' civilization so intimidating.) The crux of our deontic commitment to rationality lies in the region of axiology—in the value that rationality has for us. If rationality were merely and only a matter of (true) prudence and self-interest (however much it is our real interests that are at


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stake), the value of rationality would be less than it is. We do— and must—value our rationality not just because it helps to feather our nest but because we see it as a crucial component of our very nature.

13 Rationality and Happiness

SYNOPSIS (1) Does rationality pay off in terms of happiness? (2) To deliberate sensibly about this important question, we must distinguish between the affective (psychological) and the reflective (judgemental) modes of happiness—between emotive pleasure and judgemental contentment of mind. For, rationality has a direct bearing on the latter, but not on the former. (3) Yet, while rationality is not generally a promoter of affective happiness in its positive form, it can unquestionably greatly diminish—via science and technology—the affective unhappiness of pain and suffering in life. (4) Is rationality cold, passionless, inhumane—an obstacle that stands in the way of human happiness? By no means! Reason herself is quite prepared to acknowledge the validity of those many life-enriching, unreflective activities that call for little if any exercise of reason. (5) Given that rationality is a matter of intelligence, it is only natural that reason should be supportive of happiness when this is construed in the specifically reflective mode.

13.1

ARE RATIONAL P E O P L E H A P P I E R ?

Is rationality a good thing? The question has a rhetorical air about it. It is all too obvious that rationality is by its very nature a positive quality—a 'perfection' in the philosophical terminology of an earlier day. The issue cries out for such old-fashioned treatment, since its more contemporary-sounding reformulations strike the ear strangely. 'Other things equal, is a creature better off for being rational?' But, how could other things possibly be equal in rationality's absence? The very idea is ludicrous. And yet, when everything is said and done, the question which forms this chapter's central theme still arises: Are rational people happier? While earlier chapters have examined the inner workings of rationality, the present chapter turns in another direction to deliberate about the consequences of rationality. In particular, it will examine the bearing of rationality on that cardinal aspect of

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the condition of man, the issue of human happiness, addressing one of those large questions that have preoccupied philosophers throughout the ages: Are rational people happier? Does rationality —the proper use of our intelligence—pay off in terms of advantage for this key aspect of the human condition? This theme harks back to deliberations of the philosophers of ancient Greece on the question: Is the wise man also happy?

1 3 . 2 TWO MODES OF 'HAPPINESS'

As often happens with philosophical problems, the pivotal issue is not just one of examining the facts, but predominantly one of clarifying concepts and issues. For, the'question of the linkage between rationality and happiness hinges critically on just how we propose to understand the idea of 'happiness'. Distinctions must loom large here. In particular, we face two crucially diverse alternatives, depending on whether we construe happiness in an affective or in a reflective sense—whether we conceive of it as a psychological state of subjective feeling, or as a judgemental matter of rational assessment and reflective evaluation. This distinction between affective happiness and reflective happiness— between euphoria and contentment, as it were—requires closer consideration. Figuratively put, affective happiness depends upon the viscera and reflective happiness on the brain. The difference turns on whether one responds to things positively by way of an emotive, psychological reaction, some sort of warm, inner affective glow, or whether one responds to them by way of a rationalized proappraisal, a deliberate, intellectual judgement of the condition of things. As a psychological state, affective happiness is a matter of how one feels about things—a matter of mood or sentiment. Primarily, it turns on what would commonly be called enjoyment or pleasure. It is the sort of psychic state or condition that could, in theory, be measured by a euphoriometer and represents the sort of physiologically engendered condition that might—and indeed can—be induced by drugs or by drink. (Think of the 'happy hour' at cocktail bars.) By contrast, reflective happiness is a matter of how one thinks

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about things, it is reflected in appraisal and judgement—in how one assesses or evaluates the current situation rather than how one reacts to it emotionally or affectively or psychically. It is not a psychological state of feeling at all, but an intellectual stance of reflectively positive evaluation. It is a matter of being so circumstanced as to appraise one's condition with judgemental approbation. The issue is one of rational satisfaction rather than pleasure, of what Aristotle called evdai^ovia in contrast to -qSovyj. Happiness in this second sense consists in the reflective contentment of one who 'thinks himself fortunate' for good and sufficient reason. Its pivot is not 'pleasure' but 'contentment of mind'. The two sorts of 'happiness' accordingly also have very different temporal qualities. Affective happiness (pleasure) is generally something fleeting and short term—a thing of psychic moods and whims, of the feeling of the moment. By contrast, reflective happiness (rational contentment) is generally something deeper and less transient—a matter of understanding rather than feeling, of stable structure rather than transitory state. Very distinct issues are thus at stake. People may well take satisfaction (quite legitimately) in actions or occurrences which, like Kantian works of duty, do not at all promote their 'happiness' in any affective sense of that term—indeed, which may even impose a cost in this regard. It does not follow that the individual who prospers in happiness or welfare is thereby superior in 'quality of life'. (We come back to the cutting edge of John Stuart Mill's obiter dictum: 'Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.') And our attitude towards these matters tends to be very different. Toward people or nations that have—even to abundance —the constituents of affective happiness, we may well feel a certain envy, but our admiration and respect could never be won on this ground alone. Such issues are judgemental and accordingly hinge on reflective happiness. Recognizing that there are two very different ways of interpreting the idea of 'happiness', we must note that which of them one adopts will make all the difference for the question of how rationality and happiness are interrelated. If happiness is construed in the reflective sense as rational satisfaction, then rationality is indeed a means towards greater happiness. For one thing, people who proceed rationally are, thanks to their rationality, going to improve the chances that


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things will eventuate favourably for the promotion of their real interests. And even when things do go wrong—as they doubtless often will—the rational person has the consolation of rationality itself, of the recognition of having done one's best. For, the rational person prizes reason itself and takes rational satisfaction in the very fact of having done what reason demands. Even when matters go awry due to 'circumstances beyond one's control', the rational agent has that contenting consolation of 'having done one's best in the face of the inevitable' which was so greatly prized by the ancient Stoics. Realizing the limits of his powers, the rational person avoids pointless regrets and futile recriminations, achieving the self-respect and justified self-satisfaction that goes with the realization that one has done all one can. Deliberations of this sort combine to indicate that if happiness is construed in terms of one's reflective contentment with the condition of things by way of intellectual appraisal, then there is certainly good reason to think that the rational person will indeed, by virtue of that rationality, fare better in the pursuit of happiness. On the other hand, if happiness is seen as an affective psychic condition—a matter of point-accumulation on the euphoriometer —then the thesis that rationality promotes happiness becomes very questionable. In the first place, there is the fact that we can gain ready access to euphoria through avenues not particularly endorsed by reason. For one thing, there is the prospect of drugs and psychic manipulation. For another, the very fact that we can speak of 'harmless pleasures' indicates that there are also harmful ones of which reason is bound to disapprove. By its very nature, reason is geared not to our pleasure but to what is in our best interests, and so there is no basis for thinking that a heed of reason's dictates will advantage us in the pursuit of affective pleasure.1 ' It is useful to observe the close parallelism of these ideas to discussions in the post-Aristotelian schools of Greek philosophy. The distinction between affective happiness and reflective happiness runs parallel to their distinction between pleasure or enjoyment (^Sourj) on the one hand, and genuine well-being (evSai/j-oCa) on the other. And if one identifies rationality with what those ancients called wisdom (aoCa), then their insistence that wisdom was a necessary (though not necessarily sufficient) condition for the achievement of true happiness (well-being = evdoaixovCa = humanflourishing)parallels our present conclusion that rationality is bound to facilitate reflective happiness. The discussions of those classical moralists are intimately relevant to our present deliberations, and point towards results of much the same general tendency. (Where wisdom rather than 'know-

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Somebody is bound to object: 'Surely rational people are the happier for their rationality, even in the affective mode of happiness, because their intelligence is capable of benefiting them in this regard as well.' It would doubtless be very nice if this were so. But, alas, it is not. For, while intelligence can lead one to water, it cannot ensure that drinking produces any worthwhile effects. People being what they are, there is no reason to think that conducting their affairs intelligently benefits them in terms specifically of increased affective happiness. To be sure, there is the fact that rational people will be the more 'knowledgeable'—that they will (presumably) transact their cognitive and their practical affairs with greater success in the realization of their objectives. But this will not mean all that much for their specifically hedonic happiness. For experience teaches that people are not generally made affectively happier by 'getting what they want'.This very much depends on the kind of thing that they are after. And even if they indeed are after the things of which reason approves, this will not help them all that much when affective or hedonic happiness is at issue. Of course, people who proceed rationally will be disappointed less often than they otherwise would be. Their rationality can plausibly be expected to spare them sundry unpleasant surprises. But, by the same token, rationality may also possibly occasion its bearer some pain and dismay. For rational foresight and foreknowledge can also lead to painful apprehensions and gloomy forebodings with respect to things that will probably go wrong—of which life is bound to afford many instances. And there is yet another, less obvious, aspect of the matter. Rational comportment is a matter of the intelligent use of means towards realizing our appropriate ends. The region where it will prove productive is where intelligent action can be expected to bear good fruit. But happiness in its hedonic sense is not a good instance of this. For affective happiness is something too ephemeral and capricious to lend itself to effective manipulation by rational means. (Even—and perhaps especially—people who 'have everything' may yet fail to be happy; there is nothing all that paradoxical or even unusual about someone who says 'I know that how' is concerned, there is no technological obsolescence.) For an informative and interesting treatment of the relevant issues, see J. C. B. Gosling and C. C. W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford, 1982).

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in these circumstances I should be happy, but I'm just not.') 2 Affective happiness is largely a matter of moods and frames of mind—easily frustrated by boredom or predictability. It is an ironic aspect of the human condition that affective happiness is inherently resistant to rational management. Judge this from your own experience! Among the people you know, are the rational ones—the intelligent and sagacious and prudent ones—any happier, on balance, affectively speaking, than their more thoughtless and happy-go-lucky compatriots? Most likely not. It would seem that an easy-going disposition and good sense of humour counts for more with affective happiness than intelligence and rationality. To be sure, it might seem on first thought that the singlemindedly efficient pursuit of affective happiness is bound to provide greater pleasure in the long run. But the facts of experience teach otherwise. John Stuart Mill's description of his own experience is instructive in this regard. In a striking passage in his Autobiography he wrote as follows: It was in the autumn of 1826. I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to. . . . I t occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: 'Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all . . . could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?' And an irrepressible selfconsciousness distinctly answered, 'No!' At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted, and having much in common with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the antiself-consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Ainjing thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life 2

Recall Edward Arlington Robinson's poem about 'Richard Corey', the man who 'was everything to make us wish that we were in his place' and yet one night 'went home and put a bullet through his head'.

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(such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object.3 f, Getting what we naively and unevaluatedly want can be a hollow business. And ironically, when hedonically affective happiness is pursued, however rationally and intelligently, it inclines to flee away. (This is yet one more way in which the project of 'the pursuit of happiness' faces substantial inherent difficulties.) For, as Mill's deliberations indicate, rationality itself teaches us in the school of bitter experience about the ultimate emptiness of this sort of thing—its incapacity to deliver on the crucial matter of real contentment by way of reflective happiness. Considerations of this sort combine to indicate that when happiness is construed in the hedonic terms of affective euphoria or pleasure it becomes implausible to hold that the rational man is the happier for his rationality.4

1 3 . 3 MORE ON THE AFFECTIVE R E W A R D S OF RATIONALITY

There is, however, a further, importantly relevant, aspect to the issue of the bearing of rationality on happiness in its affective dimension. For, our deliberations have to this point neglected an important distinction. The hedonic domain actually has two sides—the positive, which pivots on affective happiness or pleasure, and the negative, which pivots on affective unhappiness or pain. A negatively-oriented affective benefit is the removal or diminution of something bad. (It is illustrated in caricature by the story of the man who liked to knock his head against the wall because it felt so good when he stopped.) A positively-oriented affective benefit, on the other hand, is one which involves something that is pleasant in its own right rather than by way of contrast with a distressing alternative. This distinction bears importantly on our problem. For, there is no doubt that the state of human well-being has been, and can still 3 The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. J. Coss (New York, NY, 1929), 94-101. 4 To be sure, the fact remains that rational people will certainly be better off (reflectively speaking) on rationality's account—seeing that they are bound to take pleasure in rationality itself.


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further be, greatly improved through the use of intelligence—in the area of science and technology—towards the negatively-oriented benefits of reduced human misery and suffering. Consider only a few instances: medicine (the prevention of childhood diseases (through inoculation), anaesthetics, plastic and restorative surgery, hygiene, dentistry); waste disposal and sanitation; temperature control (heating and air conditioning); transportation and communication; and so on. It would be easy to multiply examples of this sort many times over. Intelligence can certainly stand us in good stead in averting causes of distress and boredom. It can vastly improve the 'quality of life'. But the fact remains that, as the world turns, this diminution of the negative does not necessarily yield positive repercussions for affective happiness. Augmented well-being does not mean an increase in affective happiness; a lessening of suffering and discomfort does not produce a positive condition like pleasure or joy or happiness. For, pleasure is not the mere absence of pain, nor joy the absence of sorrow. The removal of the affectively negative just does not of itself create a positive condition— though, to be sure, it abolishes an obstacle in the way of positivity. And so, the immense potential of modern science and technology for the alleviation of suffering and distress does not automatically qualify it as a fountain of affective happiness. The harsh fact of the matter is that technical rationality is relatively powerless as a promoter of hedonic happiness in its positive dimension. To be sure, technical intelligence can indeed provide such enhancers of affective positivity as alcoholic beverages or drugs. But there is a big fly in this ointment. The affective pleasure of such euphoria-inducers becomes eroded by routinization. Habituation swiftly undermines the pleasantness of these 'pleasures', so that little if any real pleasure accrues from their merely nominal 'enjoyment'. In the end, it is not the pleasure of indulgence but the discomfort of deprivation that comes to prevail. Natural psychological and physical mechanisms soon transmute the 'benefits' at issue with these technically contrived euphoria-inducers from a positive to a negative character. Designed for the enhancement of pleasure, their potential is soon reduced to the diminution of pain. No doubt rationality pays. But, the irony of the human condition is that as far as affective matters are concerned the utility

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of reason is vastly more efficacious at averting unhappiness than at promoting happiness in its positive dimension. 1 3 . 4 IS RATIONALITY INHUMANE?

Can one be simply too rational in the management of one's life? It is sometimes said that a person's rationality can actually impede the realization of happiness. After all, man does not live by reason alone, and many rewarding human activities—family life, social interaction, sports and recreations, 'light' reading, films and other entertainment, and so on—make little or no use of reason or reasoning. And so, people often say things like: 'Rationality is cold, passionless, inhumane. It stands in the way of those many life-enhancing, unreflective, spontaneous activities that have an appropriate place in a full, rewarding, happy human life.' One frequently hears such claims maintained. But they are profoundly mistaken. We must return here to the preceding chapter's distinction, between those actions and activities that are a-rational in that they involve little or no use of reason and those that are irrational in actually going against reason. Now, reason can and does recognize as wholly proper and legitimate a whole host of useful activities in whose conduct it itself plays little if any part—socializing, diversions, recreations, and so on. Reason itself is altogether willing and able to give them its stamp of approval, recognizing their value and usefulness. Accordingly, one cannot be too rational for one's own good. If, contrary to fact, there were such a defect—if this could be established at all—then reason herself could bring this circumstance to light. Intelligence does not stand as one limited faculty over against others (emotion, affection, and the like). It is an allpervasive light that can shine through to every endeavour—even those in which reason herself is not involved. Whatever human undertaking is valid and appropriate can be shown to be sound by the use of reason. It is the exercise of rationality that informs us about priorities. For that very reason it takes top priority. While man is indeed a rational being, he is not only a rational being. There is more to humanity than rationality. Our natural make-up is complex and many-sided—a thing of many strains and


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aspects. We have interests over and above those at issue in the cultivation of reason. But there is no reason whatever why our reason should not be able to recognize this fact. To fail to do so would be simply unintelligent—and thus contrary to the very nature of rationality. The very fact that man is the rational animal means that there is a good deal more to us than reason alone—and nothing prevents reason from recognizing that this is so. People can certainly neglect those various valuable a-rational activities in favour of over-calculation, over-planning, and an inflated over-commitment to various uses of reason. However, the salient fact is that rationality itself dis-recommends this. In being 'too rational' one would, strictly speaking, not be rational enough, it is perfectly rational sometimes to do heedless or even madcap things in this life—'to break the monotony' and inject an element of novelty and excitement into an otherwise prosaic existence. All work and no play makes life go stale. People can sometimes take quite appropriate pleasure from 'irrational' actions—climbing mountains, betting on the ponies, dipping into a freezing river. To break the mould of a colourless rationalism is, within limits, not all that irrational—is not at all unintelligent. It is part and parcel of a deeper rationality that goes beyond the superficial. After all, rationality aims at goods as well as goals. It is clearly in a position to appreciate the values of enjoyment as well as those of achievement. Several among the ancient philosophers—Aristotle pre-eminently —insisted on the primacy of the strictly intellectual pleasures inherent in the exercise of reason. They maintained that only the purely rational intellectual activities—learning, understanding, reasoning—yield satisfactions of a sort worthy of a rational being. Only in the pleasures of the mind did they see true satisfactions. Accordingly, they suggested that only in the pleasures that are consequent upon the exercise of reason can rational creatures take appropriate satisfaction—everything else is a matter of dross and delusion. But this line of thinking is deeply problematic. Rationality does not demand that we seek satisfaction in reason alone and view the pleasures of reason as solely and uniquely genuine. Far from it! Reason can and does acknowledge the need for diversity and variation; she can and does recognize the importance of activities that call for little if any exercise of reason. The importance of a

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balance of varied goods within a complex 'economy of values' is something which reason herself emphasizes—even though this complex must itself encompass various mundanely a-rational goods. To insist that rational satisfaction—reflective contentment —rather than mere 'pleasure' is the pivot of genuine happiness does not mean that commonplace pleasures have no legitimate place in a truly happy life. There is no sound reason why rational people need be spoil-sports. A deep distrust of reason is a constant leitmotiv of Spanish philosophy that runs from Francisco Sanchez and Gracian y Morales in the seventeenth century to Miguel de Unamuno and Jose Ortega y Gasset in more recent days. What the Spaniards have against reason is that, as they see it, she directs people to certain particular sorts of ends; namely, 'reasonable' and 'sensible' ends— paternalistic ends which can be objectively validated through the approval of others (experts). But the pursuit of such ends does not make people happy. 'Be reasonable!' is the eternal cry of disillusioned middle age against the enthusiasms of youth. And this eternal cry is destined to be eternally unavailing because youth realizes instinctively—and rightly—that the path to happiness does not lie in this particular direction. Reason aims at what is clear, fixed, cut-and-dry. Hers is the way of the well-ordered zoo, not the way of the jungle. She is at odds with the vibrant disorder of human life. The Spanish perspective combines a common-sensical view of the good life with a deep scepticism that reason can get us there. For the world—and in particular the social world in which we humans live—is changeable, chaotic, irrational. 'General principles' are of little help; the useful lessons of life are those people learn in the school of bitter experience. Reason as such is not a suitable guide to a satisfying life. So urge the Spaniards. All of this has a certain surface plausibility. But even in a difficult world those who do not examine it rationally—and refuse to profit by a reason-guided exploitation of the experience of others—create needless difficulties for themselves. To be sure, there are other guides to human decision than reason herself— custom, instinct, experience, and spontaneous inclination among them. But, only reasoned examination can teach us about their proper use. What is particularly ironic in the Spanish critique of applied


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reason is its inevitable reliance on reason herself for its validation. That reason may have its limits as a guide to the attainment of a satisfying life may well be true. But only reason herself can inform us about this—only a rational scrutiny and reason-guided investigation of the matter can reliably inform us what these limits are. In developing their case for the limitations of reason, the Spaniards are (inevitably) constrained to make use of the resources of reason herself. Yet, does rationality not undermine the emotional and affective side of man—the uncalculating, unselfish, open, easygoing, relaxed side that is no less significant in the overall scheme of human affairs than the sterner enterprise of 'pursuing our ends'? Is reason not deficient in one-sidedly emphasizing the 'calculating' aspect of human nature? Not at all! There are good grounds for reason not to deny the claims of man's emotional and affective side. For life is infinitely fuller and richer that way! Reason, after all, is not our sole directrix. Emotion, sentiment, and the affective side of our nature have a perfectly proper and highly important place in the human scheme of things—no less important than the active striving for ends and goals. In so far as other valid human enterprises exist, there is good reason why reason can (and should) recognize and acknowledge them. To insist on reasoning as the sole and all-comprising agency in human affairs is not rationalism but a hyper-rationalism that offends against rationality as such. To say that reason is cold, inhumane, bloodless, and indifferent to human values is to misconceive rationality as purely a matter of means to arbitrary ends, committed to the approach of 'let's get to the goal but never mind how, with no worry about who or what gets hurt along the way'. But, such a 'mechanical' view of reason, regrettably widespread though it is, is totally inappropriate. It rests on that familiar fallacy of seeing reason as a mere instrument that is in no position to look critically at the goals towards whose realization it is being employed. It refuses to grant reason that which is in fact her definitive characteristic—the use of intelligence. Again, is reason not defective because—so it is said—she generally counsels a prudent caution that is at odds with righteous indignation, courage, bravery, and other manifestations of the 'spirited' side of human life? Shakespeare's Troilus made the point as follows:

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Rationality and Happiness You know a sword employed is perilous, And reasonfliesthe object of all harm. * * * Nay, if we talk of reason, Let's shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour Should have hare-hearts, would they but fat their thoughts With this crammed reason. Reason and respect Make livers pale and lustihood deject.5

But here we have once more an overly narrow conception of reason. Reason is perfectly capable of acknowledging that 'sweet reasonableness' is not called for in all circumstances, and recognizing that there may be occasion for indignation and outrage in a just cause. There is little question that, as one recent author puts it, 'one can do harm to important human values by overemphasizing the values of theorizing and cognition.'6 Yet, to acknowledge this in no way undermines the claims of reason. On the contrary! It is reason herself that demands that we recognize the limited place of the virtues of cognition, inquiry, and the cerebral side of life. An adequate account of rationality must rightly stress its importance and primacy and still at the same time recognize that the intellectual virtues comprise only part of the overall picture regarding the good life. As we have seen, reason urges the intelligent cultivation of appropriate ends. And in so far as those various a-rational activities do indeed have value for us, reason herself is prepared to recognize and approve this. The life of reason is not all calculating, planning, striving. For us humans, rest, recreation, and enjoyment are very much a part of it. Accordingly, reason is perfectly willing to delegate a proper share of authority to our inclinations and psychic needs. It goes against reason to say that rational calculation should pervade all facets of human life. Reason does not insist on running the whole show by herself, blind to her limitations in being simply one human resource among others. As 5 Troilus and Cressida, II, ii, 40-50. " Stephen Nathanson, The Ideal of Rationality (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1985), 157. This book is well worth reading on the subject of our present concerns.


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has been stressed from the outset of this discussion, rationality is a matter of the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends. And it would be absurd to think that this is something that can be of doubtful propriety.

13.5

REASON AS A BASIS FOR R E F L E C T I V E H A P P I N E S S

The upshot of these deliberations regarding the bearing of rationality upon happiness is clear enough, even though subject to various complicating distinctions. If we construe happiness in the more reflective mode as an intellectual matter of rational contentment, then the rational person is bound to be the better off by way of improved chances for happiness. But, if happiness is construed in the affective mode as a matter of pleasure or euphoria, then there are no good grounds for thinking that rationality is profitable for happiness in its positive aspect— though even here it does have the merit of being able to help in averting affective unhappiness. The outcome to the question of rationality's claims as a supporter of happiness is thus indecisive. The answer will depend crucially on just which conception of happiness we propose to adopt. These deliberations accordingly lead to a result that is not perhaps all that surprising. Given that rationality is a matter of intelligence—of the effective use of mind—it is only natural and to be expected that rationality should be congenial to and supportive of that reflective, judgemental mode of happiness over which mind is the final arbiter. But, being what it is, rationality need not be unintelligent about it and overlook the importance for us of values outside the intellectual domain.

14 Conclusion: The Grandeur ahcl Misery of Reason

(1) The glory of reason is that she liberates her possessors from the control of 'external' forces, endowing them with a claim to at least partial self-determination. (2) Reason is autonomous: no wholly alien authority is in a position to lord it over her. Rational justification— including the rational justification of placing reliance on reason as such— admits of no court of appeal whose authorty is not endorsed by reason herself. (3) The misery of reason lies in the fact that, while always and everywhere insisting on obedience to her requirements, she nevertheless can provide no certified assurance that in following her counsels as best we can we may not actually damage rather than enhance the prospects of attaining our legitimate ends. While there is no intelligent alternative to doing reason's bidding, we must nevertheless do this in the absence of guarantees. SYNOPSIS

14.1

THE G R A N D E U R OF REASON

Though man is—as Pascal said—but a reed, he is a thinking reed. Though a mere pawn on the world's immense chess-board, he is— or can be—a knowledgeable pawn. We are weak and mortal creatures at the mercy of nature and of chance, but the exercise of intelligence affords us a glimpse into the realm of the infinite and the timeless. Reason is the source of human power—and of human nobility. Many of the great things we can achieve in this world we can accomplish only through her means. Such greatnesses as we have, we owe in large measure to the possession of reason. It is thought, intelligence—the exercise of rationality in the interests of knowledge, valuation, and right action—that sets humans apart from other creatures and renders us (mere animals that we are!) akin to the gods. Homo sapiens is a rational animal. The fact that we are animals

The Grandeur and Misery of Reason

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places us squarely within the order of nature. But, the fact that we deem ourselves rational means that we see ourselves as exempted from the absolute rule of external forces and as endowed with some measure of self-determination. A rational creature is one capable of making its idealized vision of what it should be determine at least in part what it actually is. Our claim to rationality means that our nature is not wholly given—that we have the ability to contribute in at least some small degree to making ourselves into the sorts of creatures we are. What mechanisms can ensure the co-ordination of human behaviour for the general good? There is of course the path of force, constraint, and coercion. But, that is hardly an attractive option. Again, there is the path of rhetorical appeal, propaganda, subliminal suggestion, and the advertising arts. But, this way of eliciting agreement is ultimately unworthy of man in violating his dignity as a thinking being. Only through rational persuasion— through appeal to his reason—can we do justice to another's rational humanity. Kant put the matter well: Nothing is so sacred that it may be exempted from this searching examination [of reason] which knows no respect for persons. Reason depends on this freedom for its very existence. For reason has no dictatorial authority; its verdict is always simply the agreement of free citizens, of whom each one must be permitted to express, without let or hindrance, his objections or even his veto.1 Only an appeal to persuasive grounds in convincing people, only a recourse to their intelligence, is a truly worthy means of obtaining their compliance. It alone acknowledges the dignity of man and assures the treatment of others as we ourselves would wish to be treated—as people who can come to responsible decisions when presented with the relevant information. The possession of rationality—our capacity to act on the basis of good reasons whose normative force we ourselves recognize as such, rather than acting wholly under the constraint of 'external' compulsions and influences—is exactly what makes us free agents. Free will is the capacity to choose and 'do as we want'—be it to heed the call of reason or to ignore it. But, it is only in heeding reason's call that we are fully free: we are 'true to ourselves' precisely when we act on the basis of reasons whose cogency we 1

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A739, B767.

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ourselves acknowledge. Internal compulsion—the peremptory dictate of temperament or will—is as contrary to true freedom as external compulsion. Only in heeding reason's call do we exercise our freedom and our human intellectual potential simultaneously. If somebody is to be convinced or persuaded rationally, it must of course be on grounds that they themselves acknowledge as appropriate. One recent writer sees rational argument as coercive, complaining that 'a successful . . . argument, a strong argument, forces someone to a belief'.2 But, this gets it completely wrong. Probatively cogent rational argumentation does not—cannot— take us beyond acknowledged premisses. It is wholly noncoercive, and can only succeed in leading someone where his own beliefs and his own convictions naturally take him. Rational 'compulsion' is compulsion in name only—it is a 'compulsion' that proceeds from within the orbit of our own thought-processes and their commitments, and thus is no actual compulsion at all. Reason is inherently non-coercive because it can only take us where the ruling part of ourselves, the rational part, is prepared to go. The glory of reason is that she liberates her possessors from the control of 'external' forces, endowing them with a claim to at least partial self-determination. In viewing ourselves as rational beings we lay claim to an (at least partial) freedom from the impetus of external forces outside the range of such authority as we ourselves endorse. And in seeing others as proceeding rationally we credit them with a similar status, manifesting a respect for their status as persons that we would in turn expect and welcome from them. Viewing our fellows as rational beings is a matter of hoped-for reciprocity—of 'treating others as we would have them treat us'. As Spinoza rightly emphasized, reason provides for the essential basis of man's freedom—his autonomy as an agent. The fact that we can choose in the light of what we ourselves judge to be acceptable or desirable—that we can think and act as we deem fit by the standards that we ourselves acknowledge as rationally appropriate—frees us from the burden of deeming ourselves altogether subject to the impetus of external constraints. It is in exercising our reason—and not our will, whose moving impetus is 2

Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 4.


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generally some 'external' drive or influence—that we realize ourselves as self-determined beings for whom the only ultimately decisive authority lies in the internal forum of our own thought processes.

1 4 . 2 THE AUTONOMY OF REASON

Once we accept that A is the rational thing to do—which may take some showing!—there is no room for any further questioning about 'Why do AT For, at this stage, the best of reasons speak for A (by hypothesis). Any search for further and different reasons (over and above those that initially assured the now-uncontested fact that A is the rational thing to do) is at this point superfluous and otiose. Once the rationality of something is indeed established, there are no extra—or supra-rational—reasons to which one could appeal for validation. The autonomy of reason is exhibited in a striking way on the practical side. For consider some of the things greatly prized by evaluative reason: understanding, peace of mind, happiness. Suppose now a path to these ends that bypasses reason altogether —a pill, say, or hypnotic influence. Reason would be discontented at their use. The attainment of even valid ends in ways that bypass reason herself and wholly ignore her claims is generally disapproved by reason. It is a feature of her claims to autonomy that she herself insists on remaining in charge—on being herself the directrix who governs the pursuit of the ends that she enjoins. Reason is willing to delegate authority, but refuses categorically to abdicate her sovereign controlling power, seeing that the abrogation of intelligence is inherently unintelligent Reason herself is our best, our only reliable, guide. She is the only competent judge—even in her own case. The point is that reason is autonomous—that even on the question of which issues fall within her province she is sole appropriate judge. Like any court of final appeal, reason herself is in a position to decide what falls under her jurisdiction. She is, and must b^, her own arbiter. Whatever the limits and limitations of reason may be, this will be something about which we will have to learn through rational inquiry. Only reason herself can instruct us on these matters; no other authority is able to speak convincingly here.

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A sceptical objection yet remains: AH this emphasis on the value of reason is problematic. For, surely our own intellectual tradition—with its heavily rational orientation—is not the only viable one. Consider such alternatives as the mysticism of the Zen Buddhist, the other-worldly religiosity of monasticism, the aestheticism of the Bohemian, the utopianism of the political visionary. Rationality does not occupy a high place in such alternative valuehierarchies, since various other values (desirelessness, self-control, godliness, attunement to the march of history, or the like) would take a superior place. How then can you ultimately justify a determinative role for the value commitments of your own particular rationalistic tradition (with its emphasis on cognitive truth and pragmatic success), in contrast to the variant values of such reason-subordinating traditions? But, this line has its difficulties. Questions about the rational appropriateness of an appeal to reason are analogous in character to the question 'Can I ever pose meaningful questions?' By the time one poses this question, it is already too late to ask. The point of no return has been passed: the issue has become academic. One has already reached a juncture where no further observations on the issue can reasonably be demanded. If it is a rational justification for valuing reason that the objector demands of us, then this consideration gives rationality a special standing of (context-relative) pre-eminence from the very outset. After all, how can someone who is prepared to join the mystic or the Bohemian in subordinating reason to other values sensibly proceed? How can one cogently defend such priorities save by reasoned argumentation? And how can one intelligently implement them save by thinking their implications through? One can certainly live a life that does not grant prominent value to reason. (No doubt about that—instances abound on every side.) But, given reason's nature, one cannot do so intelligently. A mode of life can indeed be advocated by people from the standpoint of an a-rational tradition—mystical, say, or aesthetic, or hedonic. But such a 'justification' can be cogent only in so far as it is rational. Reason's autonomy from 'external' pressures means that there just is no 'greater' or 'higher' authority to which she answers, no court of higher jurisdiction to which appeal from the decrees of reason can reasonably be made. But, to say this is not, of course, to say that man lives by reasoning alone. To see reason as autonomous is certainly not to deny that there are important


229

human goods and goals outside the domain of ratiocination. Rather, it is simply to say that in so far as other human enterprises have valid claims upon us reason is in a position to discern this and to value them for it. It lies in the nature of things that 'the rational thing to do' cannot be rationally overridden—that it is just what must win out in rational deliberation. It is never sensible to proceed unintelligently. Rationality is (rationally) indefeasible. One can certainly reject or neglect reason. But, one cannot do so in a sensible, rationally defeasible way. To produce an argument against reason is already to do it homage. Reason is autonomous: no wholly alien authority is in a position to lord it over her. Rational justification —incuding the rational justification of placing reliance on reason— admits of no court of appeal whose authority is not endorsed by reason herself.

1 4 . 3 THE MISERY OF REASON

The power of reason lies in the hypothetical: 'In so far as man can achieve great things, this is so largely by virtue of his reason.' Reason's weakness lies in the circumstance that this assurance rests on a mere hypothetical—that the prospect it holds out to us is far from being a matter of assured realization, as reason herself fully recognizes. This brings us to the theme of the misery of reason. The misery of reason is rooted in the state of affairs we have characterized (in Chapter 2 above) as 'the predicament of reason'. Reason can issue no absolute guarantees. We have and can secure no assurance that doing what reason urges is in actual fact the best thing to do—that her recommendations will not actually prove counter-productive. And this means that we must live the life of reason in the full recognition that, while always and everywhere insisting on obedience to her requirements, she nevertheless can provide no certified assurance that in following her counsels as best we can, we may not actually damage rather than enhance the prospects of attaining our legitimate ends. It is the misery of reason that she can issue no guarantees—and yet must nevertheless require us to obey her demands. And so, while reason demands the recognition of her own limits

230


and limitations, she is also imperious and acknowledges no external authority. Difficult mistress that she is, reason mocks us by insisting that, while no other, superior resource is available to us, we must nevertheless recognize her incapacity ever to meet fully the demands we would make upon her. Beyond reason there lies hope—an attitude of trusting expectation that is encouraged by reason even though not validated by it. On the one hand, reason sees optimistic hopefulness in her own efficacy as something that she simply cannot warrant unqualifiedly. On the other hand, she sees such optimism as an eminently desirable attitude which deserves every possible encouragement and support. Her fully recognized impotence to do more is a source of unavoidable frustration. It is a fact of profound irony that assured confidence in the efficacy of reason requires an act of faith.

Name Ijjd§x Ackerman, Robert 76 Anaxagoras 177 Aquinas, St Thomas 204 Aristotle, 13, 73-5, 90, 92,104,202, 212,219 Arnauld, Antoine 45 Audi, Robert 6 Augustine, St 174 Baier,Kurtl8,33,34n,97 Bar-Hillel, Maya 195 n Benn,S. I. 93 Bennett, Jonathan 18 n, 192 Bentham, Jeremy 110 Bernstein, Richard J. 140 Blanshard, Brand 18 n Boas, George 18 n Butler, Joseph 36 Brandom, Robert 76, 88 Cicero 45,100 n Cohen, L.J. 196 Cohen, Morris R. 18 n Cooper, John 202 Corey, Richard 215 Dahl, Norman O. 92 Darwall, Stephen 5,18 n Descartes, Rene 37 n Diogenes, Laertuis 71 Durkheim, Emile 74,145 Edwards, Ward 195 n Einstein, Albert 177, 187 Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 146 Ewing, A. C. 18 n Ferrater Mora, Jose 18 n Feyerabend, Paul K. 45 n, 57 Foley, Richard 76 Freud, Sigmund 18 n Galen 159 Gert, Bernard 97

Gilson, Etienne 87 Gosling, J. C. B. 214n Gracian y Morales, Balthasar 220 Habermas, Juergen 173 Heraclitus 73 Hintikka, Jaakko 76 Hollis, Martin 146 Hume, David 66-8, 93-6,123 Huntford, Roland 65 Hutcheson, Francis 206 James, William 53,64,68 Kahnemann, David 195 n Kant, Immanuel2,225 Kekes, John 40, 72, 147 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 7,45 n Levy-Bruhl, Julian 74, 146 Locke,John 66 Lukes, Steven 146 MacClintock, Stuart 87 Maclntyre, Alasdair 44 Massey, Gerald 184 n Mauss, Marcel 74 McCarthy, Thomas 173 McCullagh,C. Behanl47 Mill, John Stuart 114,212,215,216 Mortimore, G. W. 93 Murphy, Arthur E. 18n Nagel, Ernest 18 n Nansen, Fridtjof 65 Nathanson, Stephen 18 n, 93,222 Needham, Rodney 74 Newton, Isaac 134,178 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 95 Nisbett,R. E. 195 n Nozick, Robert 226 Ortega y Gasset, Jose 220

232 Parfit, Derek 160 Pascal, Blaise 9,224 Pears, David 200 Peirce, Charles Sanders 62, 1?3 Phillips,L. D. 195n Plato 3, 7,177,184 Popper, Karl R. 178 Price, H. H. 59,60 Putnam, Hilary 144, 156 Fyrrfio 71 Rawls, John 103 Rips, Lance 194 Robinson, E. A. 215 Robson-Scott, W. D. i 8 n Ross, Lee 195 n Sanchez, Francisco 220 Santayana, George lg n Sartre, J. P. 101 Saxe, John Godfrey 134 Schick, Frederic 11,99

Name Index Schroedinger, Erwin 177,187. Sextus Empiricus 66,170 Shakespeare William 221-2 Sidgwick, Henry 96-7,103 Simon, Herbert A. 95 Socrates 202 Solovine, Maurice 177 Spinoza, Benedictus de 226 Swain, Marshall 76 Taylor, C. C. W. 214 Tversky, Amos 195 n Unger, Peter 70 Unamuno, Miguel de 220 Walsh, W. H. 18 n Warnock,G.J.18n Weber, Max 93 Whitehead, A. N. 18 n Wigner, Eugene 177 Winch, Peter 146,161

Subject Index absolutism 139-56 acceptance 123-4 affective happiness 211-23 akrasia 204 anthropological relativism 145-56, 161-3 Averroism 87-8,155 autonomy 42-7 autonomy of reason 227-9 axiology 208-9 Azande tribe 146 C-beliefvs. P-belief78-9 calculated risks 54-60,199 circularity 42-6 circumstantiality of reason 157-75 co-ordination 193-4 cognition 3,122-5 cognitive sources 52 communication 71 conceptual egocentrism 133-56 consensus 169-75 consistency 8 co-operation 225 cost-benefit analysis 6,98-9 contentment 211-13 criteria and standards 164-9 criteriological egocentrism 144-56 cultivation hierarchies 163-75

evidential cogency 8 expected-utility calculation 118 faute de mieux consideration 36 finalities 164-9 flourishing 103-6 free agency 225-9 free will 11 frustration of reason 229-30 gambling aversion 116 goals and ends 5-6 good reason 4-6 happiness 210-23 hierarchies of cultivation 163-9 hyper-inconsistency 75 ideal rationality 27-32 idealization 172-5 inconsistency 73-91 indexing 108 indifferentism 138-43, 155 irrationalism 155, 169 irrationality 199-200 instability of optima 22-7 intelligibility of nature 176-90 interests 98-106, 112 knowledge, limits of 188-90

dialectical reasoning 83-90 decision theory 118 deliberation 13 desires and wants 15-16 economic rationality 107-18 efficiency 8 ends and goals 5-6 ends, rationality of 92-106 enthymematic reasoning 195-6 eudaimonia 104-5,212-13 euphoria 211-13 evaluation 3,12,25-7,97-106 evolution 180-8, 207

limits of knowledge 188-90 local consistency 75 logical chaos 75 market 108 maximization 107-18 measurement of value 108-11 metacriterial monism 149-56 misfortunes 57-9 motives vs. reasons 101-2,198 negative vs. positive benefit 216-18 nature, intelligibility of 176-90

234

Subject Index

needs and wants 99-106 Nuer tribe 146-7 objectivity 169-75 ontological obligation 204-9 optimalization 6 - 8 , 1 0 , 2 2 - 7 , 2 9 - 3 1 , 36-42 overriding reasons 10 P-beliefvs. C-belief78-9 pleasure 211-16 positive vs. negative benefit 216-18 practical policies 122-5 practical rationality 27-32, 39-42,64-9 praxis 3,127,202 predicament of reason 19-32 preface paradox 79 preferability vs. preference 111-15 preference and preferability 97-106, 111-15,201-3 presumptions 50-3 presumption of rationality 191-4 principle of basis equality 139 principle of sufficient reason 188-90 probability 36-9 pursuit of happiness 215-16

reasons vs. motives 101-2, 198 reason, principle of sufficient 188-90 reflective happiness 211-23 relativism 133-56,148-9,175 requisites of reason 16 retrovalidation 53 risk 54-9 risk aversion 116 rock-bottom fallacy 45 scepticism 45-54, 137-8,155,228-9 Schadenfreude, 112 self-supportingness 205 sources for cognition 52 Spanish moralism 220-1 standards and criteria 164-9 stoicism 213 stratification levels 164-9 strong inconsistency 75 systematization 16-7, 83-7,126-32 taxonomy of reason 12 truth 80-3 universality of reason 157-75 utility 107-18

quality of life 217 questions 80-1 questioner's prerogative 144

vacationer's dilemma 117 value, measurement of 108 values 98-104

rationalization 6 real possibilities 117-18 realism 176-90 reasons, overriding 10

wants and desires 5-6,97-106 Wazonga tribe 161-3 weak inconsistency 75 welfare 103

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