Short as it is, this question is tricky because of two ambiguities.

1. "rational" could be understood in the sense of choosing what are foreseeably the most effective means to given ends, or it could be understood in a more ambitious sense that would allow the commitment to certain combinations of ends, or even single ends, to be irrational as well.

2. for each of the disambiguations for 1, the word "rational" could be understood to mean "rationally permitted" or "rationally required".

I will read your "to be immoral" as shorthand for "to act in a way that is morally wrong."

Suppose your overriding end in life is to make your sister happy. Her greatest wish is for a golden necklace that you cannot afford to buy. But you have a way of stealing it. This theft would be immoral. But it it rationally permitted and even required on the thin notion of rationality: stealing is the foreseeably most effective means for you to attain your end.

This answer remains adequate even if we allow that combinations of ends may be irrational (by excessively interfering with one another's attainment). We may simply suppose that you have no interfering ends -- or, even cleaner, no other ends at all.

Might your sole end -- making your sister happy -- be irrational? The only option I see for supporting this is to claim that it would be irrational for you not to have the end of being in compliance with morality and not to make this latter end overriding. But this claim would stretch the ordinary sense of "rational" beyond recognition. And there is a further problem: Through a somewhat strange upbringing, you might have come to believe that making your sister happy is the one and only end that you morally ought to be pursuing. So you may have the end of being in compliance with morality and you may be committed also to make this end overriding, but, because of what you sincerely believe about the content of morality, you think that the whole content of morality is that you ought to make your sister happy no matter what it takes. In this case, I think, you would be rationally (permitted and even) required to go ahead and steal the necklace even though this is, unbeknownst to you, a morally wrong action.

So, despite the ambiguities, the answer is Yes across the board.

Implicit in this answer is that it can be irrational to be moral: it would be irrational for you to refrain from the theft).

Two questions still open are whether it can ever be rational to do what one believes to be morally wrong and whether it can ever be irrational to do what one believes to be morally required.

You ask an important question about how non-experts should make reasonable judgments when there is expert disagreement. It is not enough to say that the reasonable choice lies with the majority opinion; the majority has been both unreasonable and/or wrong often enough. I think it is important to look at the case in some detail (although obviously not in as much detail as experts are able to do) and see what kind of evidence the minority is putting forth. That is, are they just nitpicking at the dominant theory, when all theories have areas of weakness, or are they themselves engaged in active empirical research? Scientific disagreement can be productive when both sides are engaged in experiment and observation, but less so when one side is working from an armchair.

I know several people who believe such things, or at least say they do.

One group thinks that there are true contradictions that involve very special cases. The usual example is the so-called liar sentence, "This very sentence is not true". There is a simple argument that the liar sentence is both true and not true, and some people believe just that.

Other people, though, think there are contradictions involving much less special cases. An example would be what are called "borderline cases" of vague predicates, like "bald". People often want to say that there are some people who aren't bald and aren't not bald either. But the so-called De Morgan equivalences entail that this is equivalent to saying that the person is both bald and not-bald (or, strictly, both not-bald and not-not-bald).

People who hold such views are known as "dialetheists". See this article for more.

Good question. I suspect that the answer is 'yes', but we need to be clear that there are some puzzles about so-called 'self-deception' that need to be avoided. It's not plausible that I could lie to myself, fully knowing that I'm doing so, and also believe what I'm telling myself. Instead, we often *shroud* lots of what we tell ourselves in such a way that its untruth is not self-evident. So here I am with a plate of oatmeal-raisin cookies. I like them a lot, and although I know on some level that I shouldn't eat very many, I'm *extremely* clever at coming up reasons why I can have just one more. (Had a rough day, will run an extra mile tomorrow, raisins are pretty good for you, you know the drill.) So I might convince myself that I can clear the plate. But to do that I have to somehow shroud the fact that I know on some level that I shouldn't.

The upshot is that a direct answer to your question is: Some people (maybe most of us) believe things that we know on some level are lies (but usually when we do we--usually temporarily--lose sight of the fact that we know this). It's only afterwards that we admit to ourselves, faced with the empty cookie plate, that what we told ourselves was bull!

By the way, _Madame Bovary_ is (among other things) a brilliant case study of this phenomenon.

Mitch Green

I think hope is often not irrational. Here is an example. You get lost in a nature preserve with little food and water. You remember someone telling you that, in a situation like this, it makes sense to walk in a straight line with the help of the sun and your watch. That's what you do, while hoping that you'll get to a road before nightfall.

This hope is not irrational relative to what you know: there are a few hours left in the day, the terrain is not too difficult, and you recall from the map that the nature preserve isn't all that large. So you have good reason to believe that there are roads no more than a few miles away in all directions and that you can cover a few miles well before nightfall.

The hope is also not irrational in a practical sense. You know that people sometimes panic in situations like this, thereby making their predicament much worse through bad decisions caused by fear or anxiety. Your hope helps you keep your cool. Calmed by your confident belief that your method is bound to work, you monitor your direction carefully and manage to maintain it well. Every 25 minutes or so there is an increase of one mile in the distance between you and the point where you realized that you were lost. ...

How is your hope in this sort of case irrational?

Your question concerns the nature of our rights and obligations with respect to our future selves. My answer shall simply assume, as I think you do, that the angel's prediction is utterly reliable, that there won't be other ways to access Kenny G music in the future, that the pleasure of my future self is not immoral, and that stocking up on Kenny G records is not a huge inconvenience to your present self.

The rationality of your decision then depends on two things: (1) how much you care about your future self, and (2) how much you care that your future self be like your present self.

(1) Some people care a lot about their future selves and try to plan accordingly -- making sacrifices in the present in order to secure the happiness of future selves, and taking pleasure in the mere contemplation of a future self's happiness. Others care much less -- investing little in the happiness of future selves, and finding little pleasure in the contemplation of a future self's happiness. This contrast is exactly like the contrast between people who care a lot about their children and people who care less about their children. Not to care at all would be immoral insofar as we ought to care about all other selves to some degree, and insofar as we have special obligations to those who we have helped to create and those who are most dependent on us (something that is at least as true of our future selves as of our children). But rationality can't tell us just how much we ought to care about our future selves any more than it can tell us just how much we ought to care about our children; it can only help tell us what actions are appropriate if we care a lot, and what actions are appropriate if we care very little.

(2) Some people want their future selves to be continuations of their present selves, while other people welcome change. I might care a lot (now) about having a future self that is a lot like my present self -- worrying, therefore, about the possibility of losing my memories, my intellect, and my friends; or I might not care much (now) about what sort of old person I become -- realizing that there are many different ways for older people to be happy, and not particularly caring which way works out for me. This contrast, too, has a counterpart with respect to how we care about our children: some parents are very concerned that their children share their own values and pursuits, others are happy as long as their children are happy. Some stability is needed in order to make any significant plans or promises, and thus to have a self at all. But, again, rationality can't tell us just how much stability is desirable; there is nothing that says that choosing a stable future is inherently more rational than choosing a changing future (or vice versa).

The rational thing for you to do, then, after hearing from the angel about the desires of your 60 year old self, will depend both on how much you care about your future self and how much you care that your future self be like your present self. If care a lot about your future self, but don't care whether it is much like your present self, then you should indeed buy the Kenny G records. If you don't care a lot about your future self, or only care insofar as it is like your present self, then you should not buy the Kenny G records now.

I don't agree with Soble's claim that "without rigor, philosophy is nothing." Philosophy can be a source of insight, a glimpse into a completely different way of thinking about things, a moment of doubt, an invitation to reflection, the introduction of a new concept, and much more. All this can happen without argument and without "rigor," whatever that is supposed to be. And disagreement, although valuable, is not necessary for good philosophy. An over-emphasis on "rigor" can shut down genuine inquiry and leave us with sterile platitudes, and agonistic debate is only one model for gaining knowledge. "Rigorous" philosophy, full of argument, and undertaken in a spirit of debate can be fantastic, but philosophy is also so much more than this!

There does seem to be an important class of exceptions to the generalization that true belief and rational belief formation help us get what we want. It seems that forming beliefs about oneself in certain irrational ways typically leads to greater happiness. An article summarizing the evidence for that is here.

Jennifer Church points out a couple of types of a case where irrationally formed beliefs (or degrees of belief, in the over-confidence case) can promote our welfare. Sure there are such cases.

But that doesn't affect the original point at stake. There being a few cases doesn't undermine the point that in general false beliefs (because of their content!) are unlikely to lead to successful action,* and so irrationally formed beliefs -- being likely to be false -- are not in general likely to lead to actions which get us what we want. And that is enough to explain why we should in general care a lot about forming our beliefs in a rational way. Which in turn is enough to counter the original questioner's worry that philosophy "uses as its main tool a mechanism [rational thought] that is the opposite of what is most important to us": in general, rational belief-formation matters for getting whatever is important to us.

*Indeed, some attractive views about ascribing content to belief-states, such as Ramsey's success semantics, make that point pivotal to the theory of content.

I agree with your observation that (at least for the most part) beliefs will make us happy on account of their content, not on accout of how they are formed -- rationally versus irrationally. And unlike Alexander George, I think that this observation presents a significant challenge to Peter Smith's claim that irrational beliefs are not likely to lead to actions that get us what we want -- since actions that result from false but happy-making beliefs may often create more happiness than actions that result from true but sad-making beliefs. A simple, and common, example is the case where a seriously ill person's false and irrational belief that they are now out of danger actually helps them to recover. Another common example is that of the person whose overconfidence actually improves their likelihood of success.