Rationality, Human Nature, and Lists

Abstract

The concept of rationality is one of the most fundamental concepts in philosophy. Except for skeptics, rationality is taken, either explicitly or implicitly, as the basic normative concept. In philosophy, as well as in ordinary life, to show that an action, desire, or belief is irrational is taken as showing that it should be avoided or given up. In this paper, I am primarily concerned with rational and irrational actions although what I say will have obvious implications for rationality applied to desires. I shall explicitly consider the view of rational actions as actions that maximize the satisfaction of one's desires. The implications for rationality applied to beliefs are much less obvious, and I shall have nothing to say on that matter here. I shall, however, talk about the view of rational actions as actions based on true beliefs. Almost all contemporary accounts of rational and irrational actions share a feature that is never defended, namely, that the basic definition of rationality must be given by means of a formula or a procedure, that is, in some formal way that mentions no specific content. Philosophers as diverse as Brandt, Gauthier, Gewirth, Hare, and Rawls do not even consider the possibility that the basic definition of rationality must be given in terms of a specific content, for example, a list, and that there is no formal way to generate that list. This failure to even consider that the basic definition of rationality must be given in terms of a list has resulted in all of their accounts being seriously inadequate. Further, it has fostered distorted accounts of human nature, for no formal account allows rationality to take its proper place as a significant feature of what we call human nature. Whether it is explicitly acknowledged or not, most philosophers who put forward a descriptive account of rational action do so in order to commend that way of acting. When they or anyone for whom they are