We talk about irrationality when behaviour defies explanation or prediction, when decisions are driven by emotions or instinct rather than by reflection, when reasoning fails to conform to basic principles of logic and probability, and when beliefs lack coherence or empirical support. Depending on the context, agents exhibiting irrational behaviour may be described as foolish, ignorant, unwise or even insane. -/- In this clear and engaging introduction to current debates on irrationality, Lisa Bortolotti presents the many facets of (...) the concept and offers an original account of the importance of judgements of irrationality as value judgements. The book examines the standards against which we measure human behaviour, and reviews the often serious implications of judgements of irrationality for ethics and policy. Bortolotti argues that we should adopt a more critical stance towards accepted standards of rationality in the light of the often surprising outcomes of philosophical inquiry and cognitive science research into decision making. -/- Irrationality is an accessible guide to the concept and will be essential reading for students and scholars interested in the limitations of human cognition and human agency. (shrink)

This book is about self-deception and lack of self-control or wishful thinking and acting against one's own better judgement. Steering a course between the skepticism of philosophers, who find the conscious defiance of reason too paradoxical, and the tolerant empiricism of psychologists, it compares the two kinds of irrationality, and relates the conclusions drawn to the views of Freud, cognitive psychologists, and such philosophers as Aristotle, Anscombe, Hare and Davidson.

On the standard interpretation, if a person holds cyclical preferences, the person is prone to acting irrationally. I provide a different interpretation, tying cyclical preferences not to irrationality, but to indecision. According to this alternative understanding – coined the indecision interpretation – top cycles in a person’s preferences can be associated with a difficulty in justifying one’s choice. If an agent’s justificatory impasse persists despite attempts to resolve the cycle, the agent can be deemed undecided. The indecision interpretation is (...) compatible with the standard interpretation of such cycles as instances of irrationality. Yet indecision corresponds to a first-person, non-instrumental perspective on the problem, whereas irrationality usually corresponds to a third-person, instrumental perspective. Due to these differences, interpreting cycles in terms of indecision offers a novel conceptual perspective, pertinent both for explanatory purposes and for the aim of normative theorizing. (shrink)

Deductive Irrationality examines and critiques economic rationalism by assessing the work of influential political philosophers and economic theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, and John F. Muth. It is one of the first serious attempts to investigate the dominant sub-fields in economic theory through the lens of political philosophy.

Just as sadness is not always a symptom of mood disorder, irrational beliefs are not always symptoms of illness. Pathological irrational beliefs are distinguished from non-pathological ones by considering whether their existence is best explained by assuming some underlying dysfunctions. The features from which to infer the pathological nature of irrational beliefs are: un-understandability of their progression; uniqueness; coexistence with other psycho-physiological disturbances and/or concurrent decreased levels of functioning; bizarreness of content; preceding organic diseases known to be associated with irrational (...) beliefs; treatment response to medical intervention, etc. Severe irrationality is sometimes caused by normal human motivation rather than by mental or physical dysfunction. Pure forms of self-deception may satisfy the diagnostic criteria of delusional disorder, but there may be no evidence that suggests that they are caused by illness. Although those with pathological delusions do not recognize their delusions as symptomatic of illness, differentiating pathological beliefs from normal irrational beliefs is vitally important: If a belief is pathological, psychiatrists must seriously consider treating the patient against her will. If it is not pathological, conversely, involuntary treatments are prohibited because they offend her basic autonomy. (shrink)

Although seemingly irrational choice abounds, the rules governing these mis‐steps that might provide hints about the factors limiting normative behavior are unclear. We consider three experimental tasks, which probe different aspects of non‐normative choice under uncertainty. We argue for systematic statistical, algorithmic, and implementational sources of irrationality, including incomplete evaluation of long‐run future utilities, Pavlovian actions, and habits, together with computational and statistical noise and uncertainty. We suggest structural and functional adaptations that minimize their maladaptive effects.

The author demonstrates that certain forms of irrationality - incontinent action and self-deception - which many philosophers have rejected as being logically or psychologically impossible, are indeed possible.

Many interpreters argue that irrational acts of exchange can count as rational and civic-minded for Hegel—even though, admittedly, the persons who are exchanging their property are usually unaware of this fact. While I do not want to deny that property exchange can count as rational in terms of ‘mutual recognition’ as interpreters claim, this proposition raises an important question: What about the irrationality and arbitrariness that individuals as property owners and persons consciously enjoy? Are they mere vestiges of nature (...) in Hegel’s system, or do they constitute a simple yet valid form of freedom that is not only a part of Hegel’s rational system of right, but its necessary starting point? I will argue the latter: The arbitrary, purely egoist self-definition of property owners is the simplest possible type of freedom for Hegel, which he dissects in order to show how the very arbitrary self-definition implicitly relies on an identity between persons, and hence foreshadows the more social forms of freedom Hegel will discuss later in his book. I make this argument by highlighting Hegel’s references to his discussion of atoms and freedom in his Logic of Being. (shrink)

A recalcitrant emotion is one which conflicts with evaluative judgement. (A standard example is where someone is afraid of flying despite believing that it poses little or no danger.) The phenomenon of emotional recalcitrance raises an important problem for theories of emotion, namely to explain the sense in which recalcitrant emotions involve rational conflict. In this paper I argue that existing ‘neojudgementalist’ accounts of emotions fail to provide plausible explanations of the irrationality of recalcitrant emotions, and develop and defend (...) my own neojudgementalist account. On my view, recalcitrant emotions are irrational insofar as they incline the subject to accept an evaluative construal that the subject has already rejected. (shrink)

In a reconstruction of the theories of Freud and Klein, Sebastian Gardner asks: what causes irrationality, what must the mind be like for it to be irrational, to what extent does irrationality involve self-awareness, and what is the point of irrationality? Arguing that psychoanalytic theory provides the most penetrating answers to these questions, he rejects the widespread view of the unconscious as a 'second mind', in favour of a view of it as a source of inherently irrational (...) desires seeking expression through wish-fulfilment and phantasy. He meets scepticism about psychoanalytic explanation by exhibiting its continuity with everyday psychology. (shrink)

People tend to be biased and irrational about politics. Should this constrain what our normative theories of democracy can require? David Estlund argues that the answer is ‘no’. He contends that even if such facts show that the requirements of a normative theory are very unlikely to be met, this need not imply that the theory is unduly unrealistic. I argue that the application of Estlund’s argument to political irrationality depends on a false presupposition: mainly, that being rational about (...) politics is something people could easily do if they tried. Since the empirical evidence shows that being rational about politics is actually quite difficult, Estlund’s argument comes up short. Moreover, I argue that the argument cannot plausibly be extended to insulate normative theories of democracy from facts about political irrationality because of the need for constraints of realism to explain the crucial role that appeals to (reasonable) disagreement play within such theories. (shrink)

A large body of research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience draws on Bayesian statistics to model information processing within the brain. Many theorists have noted that this research seems to be in tension with a large body of experimental results purportedly documenting systematic deviations from Bayesian updating in human belief formation. In response, proponents of the Bayesian brain hypothesis contend that Bayesian models can accommodate such results by making suitable assumptions about model parameters. To make progress in this debate, I (...) argue that it is fruitful to focus not on specific experimental results but rather on what I call the ‘sources of epistemic irrationality’ in human cognition. I identify four such sources and I explore whether and, if so, how Bayesian models can be reconciled with them: processing costs, evolutionary suboptimality, motivated cognition, and error management. 1 Introduction 2 The Bayesian Brain 3 The Problem of Epistemic Irrationality 3.1 Bayesian inference and rationality 3.2 Intuitive Bayesian inference 4 Sources of Epistemic Irrationality 4.1 Processing costs 4.2 Evolutionary suboptimality 4.3 Motivational influences 4.4 Error management 5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Although much human action serves as proof that irrational behavior is remarkably common, certain forms of irrationality--most notably, incontinent action and self-deception--pose such difficult theoretical problems that philosophers have rejected them as logically or psychologically impossible. Here, Mele shows that, and how, incontinent action and self-deception are indeed possible. Drawing upon recent experimental work in the psychology of action and inference, he advances naturalized explanations of akratic action and self-deception while resolving the paradoxes around which the philosophical literature revolves. (...) In addition, he defends an account of self-control, argues that "strict" akratic action is an insurmountable obstacle for traditional belief-desire models of action-explanation, and explains how a considerably modified model accommodates action of this sort. (shrink)

The present paper proposes an integrative account of social forms of practical irrationality and corresponding disruptions of individual and group-level emotion regulation. I will especially focus on disruptions in emotion regulation by means of collaborative agential and doxastic akrasia. I begin by distinguishing mutual, communal and collaborative forms of akrasia. Such a taxonomy seems all the more needed as, rather surprisingly, in the face of huge philosophical interest in analysing the possibility, structure and mechanisms of individual practical irrationality, (...) with very little exception, there are no comparable accounts of social and collaborative cases. However, I believe that, if it is true that individual akrasia is, in the long run, harmful for those who entertain it, this is even more so in social contexts. I will illustrate this point by drawing on various small group settings, and explore a number of socio-psychological mechanisms underlying collaborative irrationality, in particular groupthink. Specifically, I suggest that in collaborative cases there is what I call a spiralling of practical irrationality at play. I will argue that this is typically correlated and indeed partly due to biases in individual members' affect control and eventually the group's with whom the members identify. (shrink)

Belief polarization is said to occur when two people respond to the same evidence by updating their beliefs in opposite directions. This response is considered to be “irrational” because it involves contrary updating, a form of belief updating that appears to violate normatively optimal responding, as for example dictated by Bayes' theorem. In light of much evidence that people are capable of normatively optimal behavior, belief polarization presents a puzzling exception. We show that Bayesian networks, or Bayes nets, can simulate (...) rational belief updating. When fit to experimental data, Bayes nets can help identify the factors that contribute to polarization. We present a study into belief updating concerning the reality of climate change in response to information about the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The study used representative samples of Australian and U.S. participants. Among Australians, consensus information partially neutralized the influence of worldview, with free-market supporters showing a greater increase in acceptance of human-caused global warming relative to free-market opponents. In contrast, while consensus information overall had a positive effect on perceived consensus among U.S. participants, there was a reduction in perceived consensus and acceptance of human-caused global warming for strong supporters of unregulated free markets. Fitting a Bayes net model to the data indicated that under a Bayesian framework, free-market support is a significant driver of beliefs about climate change and trust in climate scientists. Further, active distrust of climate scientists among a small number of U.S. conservatives drives contrary updating in response to consensus information among this particular group. (shrink)

* [Irrationality]: ___ Irrationality, like rationality, is a normative concept. Someone who acts or reasons irrationally, or whose beliefs or emotions are irrational, has departed from a standard.

The literature on motivated irrationality has two primary foci: action and belief. This article explores two of the central topics falling under this rubric: akratic action (action exhibiting so-called weakness of will or deficient self-control) and motivationally biased belief (including self-deception). Among other matters, this article offers a resolution of Donald Davidson's worry about the explanation of irrationality. When agents act akratically, they act for reasons, and in central cases, they make rational judgments about what it is best (...) to do. The rationality required for that is in place. However, to the extent to which their actions are at odds with these judgments, they act irrationally. Motivationally biased believers test hypotheses and believe on the basis of evidence. Again there is a background of rationality. But owing to the influence of motivation, they violate general standards of epistemic rationality. (shrink)

Why do marketing managers in the transitional economies of Eastern Europe and China often engage in competitively irrational behavior, choosing pricing strategies that damage competitors’ profits, rather than choosing pricing strategies that improve their firm’s profits? We propose one possible reason, the moral vacuum created by the collapse of communist ideology. We hypothesize and find that managers who experienced formal communist moral ideological indoctrination are less likely to be competitively irrational than the post-communist managers who did not. Implications are discussed.

This valuable and interesting book attempts to discern the essential Freudian theses about the mind and to give them a cogent philosophical defense. Like many philosophers Gardner sees psychoanalytic explanation as continuous with folk psychology, though he holds that the latter needs considerable expansion in order to accommodate irrationality of the “Freudian” sorts.

Pseudoscience spreads through communicative and inferential processes that make people vulnerable to weird beliefs. However, the fact that pseudoscientific beliefs are unsubstantiated and have no basis in reality does not mean that the people who hold them have no reasons for doing so. We propose that, reasons play a central role in the diffusion of pseudoscience. On the basis of cultural epidemiology and the interactionist theory of reasoning, we will here analyse the structure and the function of reasons in the (...) propagation of pseudoscience. We conclude by discussing the implications of our approach for the understanding of human irrationality. (shrink)

A philosophical treatment of irrationality should at the same time leave space for irrational forms of thought and action and illuminate what is defective about them. While Davidson's analysis of weakness of the will is justly famous, some of Davidson's general philosophical commitments in fact conspire to make it especially difficult for him to account for irrationality. Davidson's conviction that irrationality must involve inconsistency, together with his rather circumscribed understanding of inconsistency, make it questionable whether he can (...) leave the right kind of space for irrational phenomena that seem nonetheless to exist. (shrink)

Abstract Studies of irrationality in cognitive psychology have usually looked at areas where humans might be expected to be rational, yet appear not to be. In this paper the other extreme of human irrationality is examined: the delusion as it occurs in psychiatric illness. A parallel is suggested between the delusion as an aberration of cognition and some illusions which result from aberrations within optics. It is argued that, because delusions are found predominantly within certain limited areas of (...) cognitive functioning, they may represent a form of mental aberration which may tell us something about the abstract properties of mind. Possible implications of this model for several areas of cognitive science are discussed. (shrink)

The philosophical study of irrationality can yield interesting insights into the human mind. One provocative issue is self-defeating behaviours, i.e. behaviours that result in failure to achieve one’s apparent goals and ambitions. In this paper I consider a self-defeating behaviour called choking under pressure, explain why it should be considered irrational, and how it is best understood with reference to skills. Then I describe how choking can be explained without appeal to a purely Freudian subconscious or ‘sub-agents’ view of (...) mind. Finally, I will recommend an alternative way to understand self-defeating behaviour which comes from a synthesis of Peter Strawson’'s explanation of ‘self-reactive attitudes’, Mark Johnston’'s notion of ‘mental tropisms’, and revised Freudian descriptions of the causes of self-defeating behaviour. (shrink)

Jon Stewart's continued criticism of the inconsistency and irrationality of the American media, the notion of truthiness has relevance for any fan of The Daily Show. This chapter looks a little bit more closely at two notions of truthiness. Focusing on the first sense, it draws some parallels between truthiness and paradigm cases of motivated epistemic irrationality like wishful thinking and self‐deception. Then, it turns to the second sense to see if relying on our guts in the way (...) Colbert suggests might sometimes be rational. (shrink)

The specific type of irrationality known as akrasia or weakness of the will has been a subject of vigorous debate ever since Plato in his Protagoras had Socrates defend the thesis that "no one willingly does wrong." Against Socrates and many contemporary thinkers on the subject, Mele attempts to vindicate akrasia as a genuine possibility. As he explores the theoretical labyrinth, his view emerges as rich in philosophic insight and experimental data from psychological research, the latter of which he (...) uses effectively in showing the way out of a number of paradoxes. (shrink)

My primary aim in Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control (1987) is to show that and how akratic action and self-deception are possible. The control that normal agents have over their actions and beliefs figures in the analysis and explanation of both phenomena. For that reason, an examination of self-control plays a central role in the book. In addition, I devote a chapter each to akratic belief and the explanation of intentional action. A precis of the book (...) will provide a useful context for the three essays that follow. (shrink)

Many philosophers and psychologists have thought that people untutored in philosophy are moral realists. On this view, when people make moral judgments, they interpret their judgments as tracking universal, objective moral facts. But studies of folk metaethics have demonstrated that people have a mix of metaethical attitudes. Sometimes people think of their moral judgments as purely expressive, or as tracking subjective or relative moral facts, or perhaps no facts at all. This paper surveys the evidence for folk metaethical pluralism and (...) argues for an explanation of this mix of folk metaethical attitudes: without philosophical education, these attitudes are typically caused by factors that are insensitive to their truth. Moreover, unless they can be justified by other means, metaethical attitudes with this etiology are, as a result, irrational, and ought not be used as evidence for or against moral realism. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy of blaming passions for our unhappiness. If only we were more rational, it is claimed, we would live happier lives. I argue that such optimism is misguided and that, paradoxically, people with desires, like us, cannot be both happy and rational. More precisely, if someone rational has desires he will not be fully happy, and if he has some desires that are rational and – in a yet-to-be-specified sense – demanding, he will be (...) frankly unhappy. Call this claim Rational Pessimism. The argument for Rational Pessimism can be considered as a variation on a Schopenhauerian argument that bluntly claims that, because desires involve lack and suffering, desiring souls like us cannot be happy. I argue that, even if Schopenhauer’s argument escapes most attacks that have been targeted against it, it faces decisive empirical objections. I argue that Schopenhauer’s argument can, however, be rescued if it is assumed that we are rational. (shrink)

There are at least three basic phenomena that philosophers traditionally classify as paradigm cases of irrationality. In the first two cases, wishful thinking and self-deception, a person wants something to be true and therefore ignores certain relevant facts about the situation, making it appear to herself that it is, in fact, true. The third case, weakness of will, involves a person undertaking a certain action, despite taking herself to have an all-things-considered better reason not to do so. While I (...) think that Stephen Colbert's notion of "truthiness" might be able to fit the mold of each of these three kinds of irrationality, it applies most directly to cases of wishful thinking and self-deception — and it’s these two types of irrationality that I discuss extensively in this paper. As we will see, there are some troubling philosophical problems that arise regarding phenomena like self-deception. But we can use the concept of truthiness to show how these “paradoxes of irrationality” may be resolved without denying the fundamental irrationality of truthiness itself. -/- An earlier version of this paper ("Truthiness, Self-Deception, and Intuitive Knowledge") appeared in "The Daily Show and Philosophy" (2007). (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument against the view that structural (or attitude-based) irrationality consists in failing to respond correctly to normative reasons. According to this view, a pattern of attitudes is structurally irrational if and only if that pattern guarantees that one has at least one attitude one ought not to have. I argue that this ought-violation view comes with three indispensable theoretical commitments. These commitments concern various relationships between normative permissions and oughts that govern beliefs and intentions, (...) and they may appear plausible when viewed in isolation. However, once they are collectively conjoined, they imply oughts that are incompatible with the ought-violation view of structural irrationality. In particular, on the ought-violation view, these oughts entail that you are necessarily structurally irrational whenever [you intend to p] and [you believe that it is not the case that you ought to p]. However, since you can rationally intend things that you believe to be normatively optional (e.g. merely permitted or supererogatory), the ought-violation view faces the following dilemma: it must either deny one of its essential commitments or accept as irrational a set of attitudes that are clearly not. Either way suffices to show that the ought-violation view cannot serve as a correct analysis of structural irrationality. (shrink)

Abstract:This study explores a phenomenon that has been shown to adversely affect managers’ decisions—competitive irrationality. Managers are irrationally competitive in their decisions when they focus on damaging the profits of competitors, rather than improving their own profit performance. Studies by Armstrong and Collopy (1996) and Griffith and Rust (1997) suggest that the phenomenon is common but not universal. We examine the question of why some individuals exhibit competitive irrationality when making decisions, while others do not by focusing on (...) four aspects of moral philosophy—deontological orientation, cognitive moral development, idealism, and relativism. Results suggest that individuals high in deontological orientation, high in cognitive moral development, high in idealism, and low in relativism will be less competitively irrational than those who are not. (shrink)

The strategy of this paper is to throw light on rational cognition and epistemic justification by examining irrationality. Epistemic irrationality is possible because we are reflexive cognizers, able to reason about and redirect some aspects of our own cognition. One consequence of this is that one cannot give a theory of epistemic rationality or epistemic justification without simultaneously giving a theory of practical rationality. A further consequence is that practical irrationality can affect our epistemic cognition. I argue (...) that practical irrationality derives from a general difficulty we have in overriding built-in shortcut modules aimed at making cognition more efficient, and all epistemic irrationality can be traced to this same source. A consequence of this account is that a theory of rationality is a descriptive theory, describing contingent features of a cognitive architecture, and it forms the core of a general theory of “voluntary” cognition — those aspects of cognition that are under voluntary control. It also follows that most of the so-called “rules for rationality” that philosophers have proposed are really just rules describing default (non- reflexive) cognition. It can be perfectly rational for a reflexive cognizer to break these rules. The “normativity” of rationality is a reflection of a built-in feature of reflexive cognition — when we detect violations of rationality, we have a tendency to desire to correct them. This is just another part of the descriptive theory of rationality. Although theories of rationality are descriptive, the structure of reflexive cognition gives philosophers, as human cognizers, privileged access to certain aspects of rational cognition. Philosophical theories of rationality are really scientific theories, based on inference to the best explanation, that take contingent introspective data as the evidence to be explained. (shrink)

In the study of judgmental errors, surprisingly little thought is spent on what constitutes good and bad judgment. I call this simultaneous focus on errors and lack of analysis of what constitutes an error, the irrationality paradox. I illustrate the paradox by a dozen apparent fallacies; each can be logically deduced from the environmental structure and an unbiased mind.

Summary Beginning with the paradoxical fact of the plurality of philosophical systems, the irrationality of this situation is examined, first, from the point of view of two solutions — the Hegelian solution and that which dissolves the paradox by denying that systems are exclusive of one another — judged to be inadequate; and then from the viewpoint of the contrast between the claims of genuine philosophy and its actual historical practice. The idea of system is examined from the perspective (...) of Spinoza's Ethics and, finally, M. Gueroult's idéalisme intégral serves as a guide in exploring the result of subordinating the historical features of philosophical activity to its systematic features.RésuméPartant du fait paradoxal de la pluralité des systèmes philosophiques, l'auteur examine l'irrationalité de cette situation d'abord du point de vue de deux solutions — celle de Hegel et celle qui résoud le paradoxe en niant que les systèmes s'excluent mutuellement — solutions qui sont jugées inadéquates; puis du point de vue du contraste entre la véritable philosophie et sa pratique historique effective. L'idée de système est examinée dans la perspective de l'éthique de Spinoza et, enfin, l'idéalisme intégral de M. Gueroult sert de guide pour explorer les conséquences d'une subordination des aspects historiques de l'activité philosophique à ses aspects systématiques.ZusammenfassungAngesichts der paradoxen Situation der Pluralität von philosophischen Systemen wird die Irrationalität dieser Situation untersucht: zunächst vom Gesichtspunkt zweier Lösungen — nämlich der Lösung Hegels und derjenigen die darin besteht, die Unvereinbarkeit der Systeme zu leugnen —, die beide als inadäquat verworfen werden; dann von einem Standpunkt aus, der zwischen den Ansprüchen echter Philosophie und deren tatsächlicher historischer Praxis unterscheidet. Der Begriff des Systems wird aus der Perspektive von Spinozas Ethik untersucht und schliesslich wird M. Gueroults integraler Idealismus als Führer verwendet, um das Ergebnis einer Unterwerfung der historischen Züge philosophischer Tätigkeit unter ihre systematischen Züge zu durchleuchten. (shrink)

Let it be granted that Buddhism has, e.g., in its logical literature, detailed canons and explicit rules of right reason that, amongst other things, ban inconsistency as irrational. This is the normative dimension of how people should think according to many major Buddhist authors. But do important Buddhist writers ever recognize any interesting or substantive role for inconsistency and forms of irrationality in their account of how people actually do think and act? The article takes as its point of (...) departure a recurring theme in the writings of the 8th Century Indian Buddhist thinker, Śāntideva, who subjects his own behaviour and thought to minute scrutiny in argumentation with himself, only to be puzzled at his own seemingly irrational persistence in ways of thinking that he knows to be wrong and actions that he knows to be worse courses. The Buddhist’s situation is profitably comparable to issues of akrasia, weakness of the will, that are taken up by Plato, Aristotle and many modern philosophers, including notably Donald Davidson and David Wiggins. (shrink)

The paper discusses several wide-spread misunderstandings of Kuhn’s theory of scientific development, most prominently the ascription that he conceives of scientific development as irrational. The core of this ascription is an assessment of incommensurability as implying the lack of any rational possibility of theory comparison. This is supposed to be due to Gestalt switches and a quasi-religious element of conversion in theory change. Accordingly, scientific revolutions cannot be a serious matter for philosophical analysis; they furthermore foreclose any scientific progress. It (...) is shown that such images of Kuhn’s theory rest on deep misunderstandings that are partly due to Kuhn’s writing style. (shrink)

A fascinating history that reveals the ways in which the pursuit of rationality often leads to an explosion of irrationality It’s a story we can’t stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlightenment enshrined rationality as the supreme value. Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal.” But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of (...) irrationality from antiquity to today—from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump—Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite. From sex and music to religion and war, irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history. Rich and ambitious, Irrationality ranges across philosophy, politics, and current events. Challenging conventional thinking about logic, natural reason, dreams, art and science, pseudoscience, the Enlightenment, the internet, jokes and lies, and death, the book shows how history reveals that any triumph of reason is temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes, notably including many from Silicon Valley, often result in their polar opposite. The problem is that the rational gives birth to the irrational and vice versa in an endless cycle, and any effort to permanently set things in order sooner or later ends in an explosion of unreason. Because of this, it is irrational to try to eliminate irrationality. For better or worse, it is an ineradicable feature of life. Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is fascinating, provocative, and timely. (shrink)

From sex and music to religion and politics, a history of irrationality and the ways in which it has always been with us—and always will be In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump, Justin Smith argues that irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history. Ranging across philosophy, politics, and current events, he shows that, throughout history, every triumph of reason has (...) been temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes often result in their polar opposite. Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is timely, provocative, and fascinating. (shrink)

The author believes that large‐scale rationality on the part of the interpretant is essential to his interpretability, and therefore, in his view, to her having a mind. How, then are cases of irrationality, such as akrasia or self‐deception, judged by the interpretant's own standards, possible? He proposes that, in order to resolve the apparent paradoxes, one must distinguish between accepting a contradictory proposition and accepting separately each of two contradictory propositions, which are held apart, which in turn requires to (...) conceive of the mind as containing a number of semi‐independent structures of interlocking beliefs, desires, emotions, memories, and other mental states. (shrink)

Current incentive structures are more favorably aligned with the world’s problems than with their solutions. We conceptualize this as the paradox of incentives to argue the need for new thinking and restructuring of incentives to break the paradox during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, and create new opportunities for societal transformation.

The phenomenon of “structural irrationality” covers a diverse range of combinations of attitudes, including (inter alia) contradictory beliefs, contradictory intentions, means–end incoherence, akratic incoherence, and cyclical preferences. This paper offers a novel, unified account of when a pattern of attitudes qualifies as structurally irrational. It begins by setting up the core of the view I will be defending: a set of attitudes is irrational if and only if it is impossible for those attitudes to be jointly successful. I show (...) that this view can account for a wide range of paradigmatically irrational combinations of attitudes. I then refine the account to make it sufficiently subjective. I argue that a set of attitudes is irrational only if the impossibility of their joint success is (i) logically transparent, (ii) subjectively inferable, and (iii) not justifiably denied. (shrink)

US law continues its historical trend of growing more permissive towards actors who engage in violent action in purported self-defense. We draw on some informal game theory to show why this is strategically irrational and suggest rolling back self-defense doctrines like stand your ground to earlier historical precedents like duty to retreat.