About Possible Benefits from Irrational Thinking in Everyday Life

The author argues that there are cases in which we should promote irrationality. In order to reach this conclusion, the author argues for the following claims: (1) that it is sometimes better to be in an irrational state of mind, and (2) that in some of those cases, we can (purposefully) influence our state of mind via our actions. The first claim is supported by presenting cases of irrational belief and by countering a common line of argument associated with William K. Clifford, who defended the idea that having an irrational belief is always worse than having a rational one. In support of the second claim, the author then explains how the control we have over our beliefs could look like. In conclusion, the author points out that the argument of this essay need not conflict with evidentialism, but does so when combined with another plausible claim about the meaning of doxastic ought statements. Furthermore, the author suggests that his argument is not restricted to the irrationality of beliefs, but can be applied to irrational states of mind in general (like desires, intentions, emotions or hopes).

Some of the most known and fertile models for understanding human behaviour are those which rest on the assumption of human rationality. These models have specific strategies for dealing with situations in which understanding human behaviour becomes difficult, i.e. cases of irrationality, and this, in turn, leads to particular methodological consequences. The aim of this article is to illustrate and systematize some of the typical theoretical approaches to the issues of rationality and irrationality and their methodological consequences, while warning, at the same time, against the risks of applying rationality models of a pronounced normative-evaluative nature. A number of important methodological consequences of applying the principle of charity to various degrees of strength are analysed and a taxonomic grid for the different ways of approaching rationality is presented.

Over the past four decades, human reason and rationality has been among the most intensely investigated topics in psychology, cognitive science, and economics. At the heart of this debate is a view of human rationality, often associated with the Heuristics and Biases tradition, on which much of our reasoning and decision making is normatively problematic because it relies on heuristics and biases rather than rational principles. In this article we describe briefly some of the evidence that has been invoked in support of this contention and consider some of the more prominent critical responses, especially from evolutionary psychology and dual-process theorists.

1984

This paper reviews the main research in the' areaof human reasoning and rational thinking to determine if man is either an "innately inefficient thinking machine" or if man's irrationality is "rooted in basic human nature," as Ellis (1976) suggests. The paper focuses on the work of two*English theorists, Mason and Johnson-Laird, and two American psychologists, Tversky and Kahneman. Emphasis-is placed on implications for improving the ability to think and reason in a rational-and logical fashion. A number of-experiments are reviewed, dealinq with decision makinge.problem'solving, psychotherapy, creativity, risk, prediction, generalization, and rational emotivi therapy. Some generalconclusions are drawn, suggesting that lost people tend to think simplistically, to make choices without considering allthe variables and all of the information, and ignore long term goals. (JAC)

Social Cognition, 2009

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

Common-sense (or folk) psychology holds that (generally) we do what we do for the reasons we have. This common-sense approach is embodied in claims like ‘I went to the kitchen because I wanted a drink’ and ‘She took a coat because she thought it might rain and hoped to stay dry’. However, the veracity of these common-sense psychological explanations has been challenged by experimental evidence (primarily from behavioural economics and social psychology) which appears to show that individuals are systematically irrational—that often we do not do what we do because of the reasons we have. Recently, some of the same experimental evidence has also been used to level a somewhat different challenge at the common-sense view, arguing that the overarching aim of reasoning is not to deliver better or more reason-governed decisions for individual reasoners, but to improve group decision making or to protect an individual’s sense of self. This paper explores the range of challenges that experim...

According to a classic position in analytic philosophy of mind, we must interpret agents as largely rational in order to be able to attribute intentional mental states to them. However, adopting this position requires clarifying in what way and by which criteria agents can still be irrational. In this paper I will offer one such criterion. More specifically, I argue that the kind of rationality methodologically required by intentional interpretation is to be specified in terms of psychological efficacy. Thereby, this notion can be distinguished from a more commonly used notion of rationality and hence cannot be shown to be undermined by the potential prevalence of a corresponding kind of irrationality.

Certain beliefs or judgements are indisputably irrational. When a victim of the Capgras delusion “believes” that her husband has been replaced by an impostor, her belief is definitely irrational. But irrationality is not confined to mental illness. Self-deception, wishful thinking, and denial are widespread, non-pathological cognitive phenomena that are also irrational. People in perfect mental health deceive themselves about their chances of winning the lottery, the intellectual talents of their kids, the fidelity of their husbands/wives, the probability that they receive a salary increase, etc. In short, mentally healthy people hold irrational beliefs in diverse kinds of circumstance. Do these various irrational beliefs have something in common? Is there anything that makes them all irrational? As its name suggests, the general purpose of the project “Irrationality” is to answer these questions and to offer, thereby, a philosophical account of cognitive irrationality.

The Philosophical Forum, 2009

We reflect that somewhere in the child, somewhere in the adult, there is a hard, irreducible, stubborn core of biological urgency, and biological necessity, and biological reason, which culture cannot reach and which reserves the right, which sooner or later it will exercise, to judge the culture and resist and revise it.-Lionel Trilling 1 These remarks were suggested by Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT. 2 The book is designed to be "popular," which does not affect its intellectual rigor, but does make it more jokey than it might otherwise be (and than I like) and reminds me of a recent comment in The Economist: "Watching Microsoft in the company of Google and Facebook is like watching your dad trying to be cool" 3 (June 28-July 4, 2008). This, I offer, as an unfair and probably irrelevant comment, though matters of intellectual style and culture may, as emerges here and there below, influence the extent to which we succumb to various forms of irrationality. (Authors for the most part lose control of titles, a fortiori subtitles, but, in any case, it would have been better to have said, less sweepingly but more accurately, "Some of Our Decisions.") Rationality used to be, perhaps still is, a philosophical topic, going back at least to Aristotle, who defined humans as rational animals, but also social animals, without explicitly settling the matter of whether the two definitions were

2013