Irrationality - part II

This article is part of a series. Read this first.

Preferences, principles, values

A preference is a personal choice towards liking or disliking something. It's something you develop and change over time, as you evolve, for example "I like clubbing" or "I hate fast-food".

A principle is a more general inner-statement, which you develop over time, and mainly dependant on the environment in which you live. It's something that you will change very hard and seldom. Most educated people have principles such as truthfulness and fairness to others, while third-class citizens are more inclined to have more pragmatic principles, such as self-interest above others.

A value is something that you usually derive from the society in which you live, and which is virtually impossible to change without being excluded from that society. If you're reading this blog (and therefore have access to an Internet connection), then most likely you are part of a society which has adopted the values of life and personal freedom. However, other societies might treasure the value of property more, thus punishing theft by the usual lopping of the right hand...

If you generalize a bit, you can easily see that all these 3 are actually very much alike, belonging to the same class, but having different intensities. They are all inner rules which dictate your decisions and actions towards a certain direction. Each has a chance to influence your behaviour, based on its strength and the circumstances at hand. For example, it's safe to assume that the value of life will dictate your decisions all the time, no matter the circumstances, whereas the preference of dancing will rarely influence your actions, and even then only under proper circumstances.

So, you might wonder, what do all these have to do with the topic of irrationality?

First of all, it is very important to notice the fact that all of the above are by definition irrational, in the sense that you do not make any decisions to have certain preferences, principles or values. You do not choose to love or hate rock music, it just happens (in the case of music, based on a myriad of small factors and randomness). Yes, it is true you can rationally justify the values which your society stands by, but you as an individual never chose to adopt them. They were simply imprinted upon you in your childhood by the culture around you and your environment.

Before I go any further, I'd like to take a moment and answer Buzz's question: can we have identical preferences, principles, values? Yes, it is theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely, because of the simple fact that human interaction defines us a lot, and it's very hard for two different individuals to have the same interactions. It would mean they would have to stay together all the time, since you cannot expect to replicate conversations. But then again, if, for example, one speaks in a group while the other listens, it will cause different changes in them... So the answer is practically no. However, I think it's more than probable to have the same values and very similar principles - as a matter of fact, close friends tend to be in that position.

Perception

Preferences, principles and values are what ultimately make us tick. It's what separates us from mindless automatons and what defines us as humans. But it's also a source of conflict. Since these items are irrational by nature, it is very unlikely that any amount of discussion will change your opinion about what you think is right or wrong. Namely, if two people have an argument about a preference, principle or value, neither of them will be able to convince the other simply because these principles are irrational anchors in our mind, which cannot be moved through rational processes.

The educated individuals seldom fight over preferences, because they are of small intensity. You will only see such petty conflicts among unintelligent and intolerant people, for example violence towards another just because he supports the other football team, or marginalizing people with different religions, or simply because they dress raggedy. As the tolerance increases, so does the conflicts move from over preferences to over principles. They stand for something more and thus are more important and worth having a discussion about.

The interesting part is when you get to values, since they are so high up, so general, and so imprinted in your social fiber, that it never crosses your mind to even question them. You ignore them in the sense of thinking about them as an absolute, an undebatable truth. However, if you do begin to question them and start a counterargument in the confines of your own society, you'll get unintelligent people dazzled and confused, and intelligent people extremely passionate and angry, ready to prove you wrong. But, when it comes to clashing societies with different values, it will probably end up with one side considering the other fanatic, extremist or terrorist...

These preferences, principles and values define a lot of our actions and decisions, both when it comes to the everyday life and in the long run. But because of different principles we tend to perceive the same things differently, and it is these difference of perception that often leads to conflicts which can be hard to settle without one side accepting the other's principles. 

So, the next question would be what is the exact link between these principles and irrationality and whether or not there is any correlation between the two?

To be continued...

Irrationality - part I

I have often asked myself the question "What is irrationality" and how can one formally and thoroughly define it? First thought to that was that irrationality needs to be defined as the opposite of rationality, or more explicitly the lack of it.

Now that we know what exactly it is that we want to do, next question is - how? Obviously, the only way you can come up with a theory is either to build up on previous ones or to try to empirically generalize from the examples and experiences around you. Since we'll refer to little if any outside schools of thoughts, all the conclusions that will be drawn will come as an abstraction of that which we see around ourselves.

There's just another thing that needs to be laid down before we proceed any further, and that is the point of view, the perspective, because different people have very different understanding of the term "rationality". Please take a moment and consider the following examples, and try to apply your own set of values to determine which you would label as rational or irrational:

1. You are a religious person, and you fast whenever the Church tells you. No exceptions.
2. You never lie. Lying is simply bad, and should be discouraged.
3. You have a paralyzed relative who is dying and in great pain. You choose to take her life to save everyone around her from a lot of misery.
4. You are in love with the most wonderful person you know. You want to spend every waking moment of your life with him/her.
5. You have dedicated your life to fight against those who suppress you and your country, and are willing to die for the cause.

The point is that, for every item above, one can find societies in which they are considered rational, as well as irrational. So, in order to have any proper discussion about rationality, we have to choose a fixed arbiter. 

We shall choose as our arbiter any individual from a non-third world, democratic country which has an above-average living-standard, is intelligent, well-read, and open-minded. He does not believe in religion, but nor does he take any stands against it. He will lie if it's the best thing to do, but never just because of selfishness. He deems item 3 as being the rational thing to do, but would never commit such an act. He will fall in love, but admit it is an irrational feeling. He will fight against those who suppress him, but he will die for nothing. We shall concede without any proof that our arbiter is a rational person (otherwise nothing will make any sense!) - this will (hopefully) be our only axiom.

If you do a Google search for define: rationality, you can see that rationality is associated with logic, intelligence, objectivity and good judgement. I can't help feeling that defining it in terms of objectivity and being able to make a good judgement on an issue is somewhat cyclical, because it points back to the same issue of the perspective - what seems perfectly objective to me, might look the exact opposite from your eyes... but let's not waste too much time on the relativity of everything :)

I will attempt a more formal definition. Let us define a reasoning as the step-by-step logic process which you take when you attempt to argue any of your decisions. It's the way you draw your conclusions from your premises, the way you generalize and the way you link your arguments. If we ignore for a moment the fact that you can't know anything for sure, and everything you know could turn upside down at any given moment, then we could thoroughly decide if a reasoning is flawed or not, because then it is nothing more than a purely mathematical process, an algorithm if you will. Careful, I'm only talking about the process here, which in the end is nothing more than an implication "Premises implies Conclusion(s)", and any such implication (be it as complex as it may) can be mathematically decided as correct or not.

I'd like to highlight here that we're only interested in the interior reasoning which one may have, and not his/her ability to externalize it. We'll name any non-flawed reasoning a good reasoning.

One might then be tempted to conclude "rational if and only good reasoning". Unfortunately, that's far from true...

If a person has a flaw in his/her reasoning, it's irrelevant weather he/she is irrational or not, because he/she is bluntly stupid, to say the least. So we're done with that part. The problem is that you can have a good reasoning and still be irrational. I've seen many cases of intelligent people that calmly and sensibly explained good arguments for their actions, and although I knew their actions to be irrational, I was convinced that their reasoning was good. Why is that so? Why can an intelligent person, with a strong logic, be irrational?

The answer is values, and principles.

To be continued...