Rationality is the use of reason to find the truth based on facts and to decide how to act to achieve desired goals. Also use this tag for questions regarding any view or intellectual movement which holds rationality in high regard and accepts it as the only legitimate way to get to the truth.
Questions tagged [rationality]
126 questions
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Is it a fallacy to say that a sane person cannot apply rational thought to the motivations of the insane?
A common argument in today's news is that:
Someone commits a heinous crime by shooting a bunch of people.
Anyone who commits a heinous crime must be insane.
Sane people cannot apply rational thought to explain what motivates the insane.
Therefore,…
YPCrumble
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Is immorality just irrationality?
If someone acts immorally - assuming some sort of free will - then they are doing so despite it being demonstrably wrong, i.e. it is a mistake as surely as 1+1=3 is a mistake. Doesn't this then give the idea of a 'bad' person a different implication…
riemann_lebesgue
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What impact has Douglas Hofstadter's superrationality had in terms of philosophy?
Superrational decision making is a type of rational decision making in which the players cooperate in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma without coordination, punishment, or magical thinking.
The idea is that when playing a symmetric prisoner's dilemma,…
Ron Maimon
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When and why do we say that two things are the same?
In a preceeding question I have asked about the foundations of rational reasonning. It seems the concept of identity plays a key role. However "identity" is not observed in the real world: our mind creates identities.
For example if you see a…
robin girard
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Is there any prospect for a unified account of rationality?
It is a commonplace that philosophers, psychologists and economists often talk about rational belief or rational behavior, but they seem to mean different things by it. Is this because
(a) there is no single thing called rationality, it is…
Bumble
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What is Kant's argument about the relationship between logic and reason?
At Wikipedia, I read:
Logic arose (see below) from a concern with correctness of argumentation. Modern logicians usually wish to ensure that logic studies just those arguments that arise from appropriately general forms of inference. For example,…
Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
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Does determinism prevent rationality?
If hard determinism is true, and our thoughts are merely the results of a causal chain of atomic interactions, are reason and logic illusory?
This matter has likely been discussed in another thread, but I couldn't find it. I was led to ask the…
Futilitarian
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Why does Aquinas argue that rationality of the universe points to a creator?
In the Summa, Aquinas, working from an Aristotelian philosophical position, argues that the rationality of the universe points to a creator. If I am correct in interpreting his work, he says that the rationality of the intellect (per tabula rasa) is…
Robert LeChef
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Does philosophy shed any light on how parties can fruitfully debate without an agreed source of truth?
A hallmark of recent political developments is extreme partisanship, where each side has near total distrust of the other. To exacerbate this situation there has been a breakdown in agreement over what constitutes the truth and even how one can…
Bob Tway
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Are there any differences between the Eastern and Western philosophical traditions on what constitutes rationality?
I am aware of the way Western philosophers define rationality but I do not know whether Eastern philosophers define it.
Are there any differences between the Eastern and Western philosophical traditions on what constitutes rationality? And if…
Elizabeth
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Is it ever rational to stumble onto the conjunction fallacy in probability?
The conjunction fallacy is the phenomenon where many people believe that the probability of the event (A AND B) is strictly greater than the probability of the event A. It is usually thought of as an error in reasoning. However, I recall reading a…
user107952
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Is desire closed under logical equivalence?
Suppose some person P desires a statement S to hold. Also, S is logically equivalent to S'. Does this mean that P desires S' also? Basically, is desire closed under logical equivalence?
user107952
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Philosophical framework for avoiding short-term strategies
In business and politics, often decision-makers make decisions that cause short-term gain, but long-term loss. So economically, this might be an unreasonable (lossy) and thus irrational process.
Is there a philosophical framework or metaphor that is…
tkruse
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Can it be rational to have beliefs one knows to be inconsistent?
It seems that the answer would be yes, especially when we think about the example of the preface paradox (authors stating in prefaces "the errors that are found herein are mine alone", i.e. believing they made some errors, even though they…
mrnobody
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Why wouldn't a government be as tainted as ordinary people according to Hobbes?
I have been watching an episode of Total Philosophy, on Hobbes' theory on why we should be governed.
I was now wondering how it could be possible to achieve a just and authoritative government, if people by the state of nature are tainted and…
Yet Another Geek
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