Re: the True and the Good and the Rational

I'd like to add a short comment on this.

I've spend years studying the question and varieties of theories of
rationality. I don't have time to provide all the arguments here. Let me
just say that Rationality is based on an ethical assumption, and without
this ethical assumption, it is not possible to construct a consistent,
viable theory of rationality. And as Goedel might have suggested, you
cannot use either the assumptions of theories of morality or the
assumptions of the theory of rationality to prove the theories themselves.

In short, the ethical assumption required to construct a consistent theory
of Rationality is this: the Summum Bonum of all human action is the
preservation of the human species. (It is not peace on earth, love,
heaven, doing the will of the gods, pleasure, or whatever -- if you assert
any of these as the purpose of human action, you cannot construct a
consistent, viable theory of rationality). 

If we accept that that Summum Bonum of all human action is preservation of
the human species (for indeed, if this were not the case, and human beings
died out, there would be no basis to make a moral judgement), then
rationality becomes the attribute of action that preserves freedom of
action, for without freedom of action, a point would be reached where,
human beings, in not having freedom of action, would die out.
 
To conclude: on the basis of the assumptions of the theory summarized
above, morality and rationality are inextricably linked. A moral
presupposition must be made before you can construct a theory of
rationality. And all theories of rationality fail in a moral sense, except
the theory that defines rationality as the attribute of (thought) and
action that results in the preservation of freedom of (choice) and action
in the context of the moral requirement of acting to preserving the human
species. Having thought about it for years, I've concluded that no other
combination of the requirements of morality and the requirements of
rationality are logically and empirically compatible, except those
outlined here. 

(You can see it would take a long time to defend this, disproving all the
B.S. about rationality from Weber and Parsons to von Neumann and Simon and
later scholars, showing the inconsistencies and contradictions in their
theories.  But it can be done. It is not hard. It would just take a long
time and a lot of money for putting the research together to prove it.) 

//CJR

On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, elson wrote:

> 
> > If you agree that people other than yourself (or marxists of
> whom you
> > approve) can be rational, and that rationality is not the same
> as
> > morality, then I guess we agree!
> >
> > My point in bringing utility maximization into the discussion
> was simply
> > that there are multiple ways to define rationality.  You and I
> both reject
> > utility maximization on *normative, moral* grounds.  However,
> you have
> > also argued that the Ought can be derived from the Is by saying
> that once
> > a relation has been defined as exploitative it follows that it
> is not
> > rational.  It may be immoral, by our definition, but that does
> not equate
> > to irrational.
> 
> No, that's not what I argued.  Read again.
> 
> > I take it to be a general sociological principle that most
> people under
> > most circumstances operate on the basis of a combination of
> self-interest
> > and some value system:  call it ideology or culture.  Because
> we never
> > have perfect information we all "satisfice" (Herb Simon), but
> more
> > importantly than simply falling short of maximizing
> self-interest, we make
> > choices based on a priori assumptions that follow from our
> values.
> > Neither sociologists or marxists are exempt from this
> principle, and thus
> > they should be cautious when tarring religious people with the
> brush of
> > irrationalism.
> >
> > RH
> >
> >
>