157. What is rational?
However,
logic does not always have a grip. It builds on assumptions that are not always
clear. It takes things for granted that perhaps should not be. Some situations
are undecidable. Inconsistencies may be built into options or actions.
Facts are subject
to interpretation and may be in dispute. As I argued in this blog, truth cannot
be much better than warranted assertability.
Aristotle
distinguished between theoretical reason, as in science, and practical reason,
as in morality. However, he considered the first to be the highest of a range
of virtues, and able to reconcile all virtues in one harmonious whole. I think
that good things may be difficult to reconcile, may be incommensurable.
In
utilitarian ethics, as in economics, rationality means the choice of an optimal
solution, for an individual or group, given desires and limited means. The
underlying assumption is that all ideas, ideals, convictions, and desires are
commensurable, can be brought together in a one consistent system of preferences.
Utilitarianism
does not do justice to certain convictions. To adopt an example from Bernard
Williams: racial discrimination may then be allowed, if it causes only limited
damage to a few victims and great satisfaction to a large number of perpetrators.
One may also, for reasons of conviction, go against one’s self-interest.
Also, the
best choice is not always a good choice. One may have to choose between two
bads. As Bernard Williams put it: ‘For utilitarianism tragedy is impossible’[1]
Alternatively,
reason is taken as giving reasons, based on the idea is that every act must
have a specifiable reason, standing apart from the act, outside it, hovering
above it, so to speak. That is foundationalism. As Bernard Williams noted, the
fundamental underlying idea is that the goings on of the world must and can be
made transparent.[2]
Foundationalism
has gradually lost its credibility. The world, and certainly actions, are not
always transparent. People do many things for which reasons cannot be
specified. Judgements are based on assumptions that are often tacit, or taken
for granted, and an outcome of one’s socialization into a culture. Often, as
Wittgenstein said, we cannot give better reasons that ‘That is just how it is
done’.
That does
not mean that one cannot give reasons, but they are to be accepted as partial,
tentative, and subject to revision. The crux of rationality then lies in
debate, putting reasons up for discussion, not in indubitable foundations. That
is reason as being reasonable.
Look around
in the world. People indulge in blind ideologies and murder each other for it.
This is fed by two things. First, the delusion that since values and views must
be universal, only one’s own are valid and the rest are to be annihilated.
Second, surrender to emotion, to the neglect of argument and facts.
Philosophy
had to learn that the ideal of simple, abstract, universal and fixed
foundations, to regulate thought and action, is not viable and human, is even
authoritarian, imperialistic. It cannot cover life, society and humanity in all
its complexity, variety and variability. What remains is practical reason,
being reasonable, willing to give reasons, debate, listen, be open to
opposition, and be as truthful as possible. We now seem to need that more than ever.
Giving
reasons when possible, putting them up for discussion, trying to be logical and
consistent, respecting facts whenever available, choosing an optimal solution
when it does not violate ethical principles and is not otherwise hampered by
incommensurability, and empathy for the other while keeping an eye on one’s
self-interest.
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