Functional Irrationality

Functional Irrationality (1)

I. Introduction

The view that some forms of irrationality may serve a useful purpose is being increasingly entertained, despite the disquiet it elicits. The reason for the disquiet isn't difficult to discern, for if the view were made good it might threaten the unqualified normative primacy that rationality enjoys in the evaluation of thoughts, beliefs, intentions, decisions and actions. In terms of the predominant "rational explanation" model, reasons both generate and justify actions, and carrying out the dictates of reason is held up as an ideal. If it can be shown that under some circumstances or for certain types of action irrational elements or procedures would produce "all things considered" better results, this would put these deliberative "ideals" in question.

Nozick (1993), going deeper, advances the view that we accord rationality intrinsic value (over and above its instrumental value), because deciding and believing in a way that is responsive to "the net balance of reasons" has come to form an important part of human identity.

We value a person's believing and deciding rationally in a way that is responsive to the net balance of reasons, and we think that is good and admirable in itself, perhaps because so deciding and believing uses our high and intricate capacities and expresses them, or perhaps because that embodies an admirable and principled integrity in guiding beliefs and actions by reasons, not by the whims or desires of the moment. (Nozick 1993: 136)

In this paper I want to explore whether such entrenched assumptions and intuitions preempt a coherent account of functional irrationality, or whether, despite the presumption against it, it can be defended within th...

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