Rationality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since September 2006. (help, talk)

Contents

[edit] General definition

Rationality is a characteristic which human behaviour or human situations can have, and it normally refers to a means-ends relationship, in which there is a non-arbitrary relationship between a conscious purpose or goal and the means to achieve it. If the chosen means are indeed conducive to achieving the purpose or goal, they are judged rational, if not, they are judged irrational. Behaviour which is arbitrary or random is normally regarded as irrational. However, purposes and goals can themselves be judged rational or irrational, with reference to other relevant means-ends relationships. Consequently the rationality or irrationality of human actions may be highly controversial, because it involves assumptions about values. What seems rational from one point of view, may not be rational from another point of view. "Rational" is not necessarily the same as logical, because logic may be irrelevant to achieving a purpose or goal. Parts of human behavior are not rational when deductive reasoning is applied towards the action and the assumption about the reason for the action. For example, people have to sleep. However, they do not sleep for the effect, they sleep because they must. At best people are rational in consciously allocating sufficient time to sleep. This would be a desire to sleep for a positive outcome and therefore is a rational behavior.

[edit] Rationality and logic

A logical argument is sometimes described as rational if it is logically valid. However, rationality is a much broader term than logic, as it includes "uncertain but sensible" arguments based on probability, expectation, personal experience and the like, whereas logic deals principally with provable facts and demonstrably valid relations between them. For example, ad hominem arguments are logically unsound, but in many cases they may be rational. A simple philosophical definition of rationality refers to one's use of a "practical syllogism". For example,

I am cold
If I close the window I will not be cold
Therefore, I closed the window

We should note that standard form practical syllogisms follow a very specific format and are always valid if constructed correctly though they are not necessarily sound. There are several notable implications of such a definition. First, rationality is objective - it exists only when a valid practical syllogism is used. Second, a choice is either rational or it is not - there is no gradation since there is no gradation between valid and invalid arguments. Third, rationality only applies to actions - i.e. shutting the window is a rational thing to do if you are cold (assuming it is cold outside). Evidence bears on belief but not on rationality. All that is required for an action to be rational is that you believe that X and that that if X then Y so you do Y. Arguments about belief are couched in the terms valid and sound - logically you must believe something if the argument supporting it is sound. In some cases, such as religious belief, the argument may be valid but its soundness cannot be known for the truth of its premises cannot be known.

[edit] Rationality in the humanities and social sciences

In philosophy, rationality and reason are the key methods used to analyse the data gathered through systematically gathered observations. In economics, sociology, and political science, a decision or situation is often called rational if it is in some sense optimal, and individuals or organizations are often called rational if they tend to act somehow optimally in pursuit of their goals. Thus one speaks, for example, of a rational allocation of resources, or of a rational corporate strategy. In this concept of "rationality", the individual's goals or motives are taken for granted and not made subject to criticism, ethical or otherwise. Thus rationality simply refers to the success of goal attainment, whatever those goals may be. Sometimes, in this context, rationality is equated with behavior that is self-interested to the point of being selfish. Sometimes rationality implies having complete knowledge about all the details of a given situation. It might be said that because the goals are not important in definition of rationality, it really only demands logical consistency in choice making. See rational choice theory.

Debates arise in these three fields about whether or not people or organizations are "really" rational, as well as whether it make sense to model them as such in formal models. Some have argued that a kind of bounded rationality makes more sense for such models. Others think that any kind of rationality along the lines of rational choice theory is a useless concept for understanding human behavior; the term homo economicus (economic man: the imaginary logically consistent but amoral being assumed in economic models) was coined largely in honor of this view.

Sociologist Max Weber's writing can be interpreted as suggesting an increasing irrationality of rationality.

Rationality is a central principle in artificial intelligence, where a rational agent is specifically defined as an agent which always chooses the action which maximises its expected performance, given all of the knowledge it currently possesses.



[edit] Use of the term rational

In a number of kinds of speech, "rational" may also denote a hodge-podge of generally positive attributes, including:

[edit] See also

[edit] External links and references

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../r/a/t/Rationality.html"