There is a number of issues raised here. Let me make just two points.

First, on the specific idea that "perhaps what we think is universally true is not, we’re simply programmed to think it is? ... that’d be a profoundly effective evolutionary tool for preservation of the species." But of course, if we were programmed to believe falsehoods, that would not in general promote survival. To get food, for example, we basically need true beliefs about where it is to be found.

Of course, this isn't to say that we need always get things right: it might be that evolution has provided us with quick-and-dirty information processing capacities that deliver true beliefs often enough to promote survival. But the point remains that what promotes survival is a sufficient number of true beliefs. So the thought that our beliefs are generated by mechanisms provided by our evolutionary history cannot by itself be a reason for across-the-board distrust.

Secondly and more generally, why should we suppose that our thoughts being the result of "physical processes" somehow makes them unreliable? I want my beliefs about what's around me to be generated e.g. via physical processes triggered by light hitting my retinas, etc., rather than to float causally free from my physical environment. Don't you?

No. Alice may think that Jones is a genius; Bob may think he's a fool. He might be neither.

One can certainly learn what rationality is: You can take courses in logic, in probability and statistical reasoning, etc. And you can study the limits on rationality: Much work has been done by cognitive scientists on "bounded rationality" (the work of Nobel-prize winner Herbert Simon on methods for making rational decisions in the presence of incomplete, inconsistent, or "noisy" information and within strict time limits), on errors in probability judgments (e.g., the work of another Nobel-prize winner, Daniel Kahneman, and his late colleague Amos Tversky), and on reasoning errors based on incorrect "mental models" (P.N. Johnson-Laird). Whether any of this can teach you to be rational will largely depend on how much of it you take to heart and practice in your daily life.

At least part of the answer to your question is hidden in the way you phrased it. Suppose that I'm wired so that there's really nothing I can do about the fact that I think inductively. As soon as I put my copy of Hume down, I revert straightaway and irresistibly to making inductive inferences. We usually 't think it doesn't make sense to criticize people for things they have no control over. If we can't help making inductions, then criticism is pointless. But we don't think that all non-rational beliefs are like this. On at least some matters, we're capable of slowly, gradually changing the way we think until the grip of the irrational belief weakens to the point where we can resist it. For example: someone might realize that they're prejudiced against some group. They might come to see that this prejudice is simply irrational. That might lead them to think they should try to change the way they think and react, and they might well succeed. Or to take a different example, when cognitive-behavioral therapy is successful, it's mainly a matter of helping people learn not to think in certain irrational ways that they once were prone to.

So... If a belief is irrational, and if it's the kind of belief that we can unlearn, then it might well make sense to criticize someone for holding it. It might make sense in a proactive way, as a means of moving them to change, and it might also make sense in a backward-looking way if we think there's no excuse for their having left themselves in the grip of the belief for so long. But if it's the kind belief that can't be unlearned, then criticizing someone for holding it is unreasonable.

Whether belief in God really is irrational is another matter. My answer would be that it isn't always. But we do know, at least, that it's a belief that some people have unlearned, and sometimes in part by way of thinking hard about it.

Some philosophers would derive the former from the latter--Kant, for example, is generally supposed to think that obligation derives directly from rationality. But I think it is going to depend upon what specific notions of responsibility ("should") and rationality are at work. I think a good way to see how a negative answer to your question might work is to ask a different version of your question: Is it self-contradictory to say that one shouldn't always be rational, or to say that one should (sometimes) be irrational?

For example, if one supposes that morality is wholly a social construct, and without any basis in reality beyond social convention (I don't believe this, but some do), then it seems to me that one might recognize duties imposed by whatever conception of morality was currently fashionable that seemed (and indeed were) irrational. But that is only if one does not also think that the principles of rationality are social constructs. Usually, however, those who think that morality is a social construct also think that all values (including rationality) are social constructs. Or, if one takes a Romanticist view of rationality (regarding it as something like cold calculation), one might say you shouldn't always be rational. Famously, in the area of religious belief, Kierkegaard argues the the "knight of faith" was one who held religious beliefs in ways that were opposed to rationality.

In most ethical systems, however, I think that, even if obligation and rationality are not treated as the same thing, they are biconditionally related, which is to say that whenever you have one, you will also have the other.

Thanks for your question. It contains two very different sub-questions:

1. Is the opinion held by the majority more likely to be right than that held by the minority?

2. Is one justified in holding onto an opinion in spite of persuasive counter-arguments to the contrary.

I should note also that you suggest that you are *certain* of your opinion on the issue in question. That is a relevant factor also.

Now, concerning 1: It is perhaps too high-handed simply to *dismiss* the opinion of the majority, though in some cases, that may well be justified. (Just imagine a naive or in some way very confused group of people.) On the other hand, there's no good inference from that fact that most people agree on something, to the conclusion that they must be right. To be safe, perhaps the best route is to reexamine your reasons for your contrary opinion, and so long as they still seem solid, then you're entitled to hold onto it in spite of what others think.

Concerning 2: What if the others give persuasive counter-arguments. If you really find those arguments persuasive, shouldn't you give up your opposing view?

Perhaps, however, by 'persuasive' you mean that the counter-arguments seem to have *some* force but are not quite convincing. It's hard to know what to say about this in the abstract, but there are plenty of cases in which "reasonable people can disagree" because there are somewhat forceful arguments on both sides of an issue. Here, however, just because there are more people on the other side, and you're alone on your side, *that* doesn't show that you should abandon your convictions and run with the herd! I suggest that the best alternative is simply to keep talking and, depending on the topic, do some research on it.

First, I believe that factors other than rational assessment of information help guide decisions and greatly affect the success of human decision-making. Sociologists and psychologists probably investigate this more than do philosophers, although an approach to critical thinking championed by the Canadian philosopher Douglas Walton sheds some light on this through its emphasis on discussing critical thinking in terms of human dialogue that needs to be understood with reference to concepts like the "emotional dynamics" of a situation where two or more people are working hard together to make an important decision and of a general "context of dialogue" that involves more than the processing of information.

Factors like those may explain why individuals with perfectly good information may fail to make a good decision if their emotional dynamics are horrible, as can occur when one of the interlocutors is belligerent or when the interlocutors misunderstand each other's expectations and needs. On the other hand, two individuals who respect each other and who share a common purpose can work together successfully even on issues about which they lack perfect understanding.

As the last example suggests, the second part of my answer is that successful decision-making rarely requires perfect information handled perfectly: relatively few decisions are "high stakes" in the sense that they will fail if the decision-makers are not perfect in those ways. Since much of our knowledge about the world is incomplete, fallible, or otherwise imperfect this is a good thing: if most of our decisions required perfection of the sort you describe, humans would fail to succeed as a species.

This question is really just about the ordinary meaning of the words or their most appropriate use. I would answer no on both grounds. There can certainly be situations where there is not one uniquely most rational decision. For example, the choice of either of two ties may be rational for a guy going in for an important interview. By choosing one of the two, he acts rationally. But it does not follow that it would have been irrational for him not to choose this tie. Had he chosen the other nice tie, he would also have acted rationally.

I think one can give an affirmative answer if one reformulates your question a bit: If a person does not choose any of the conduct options that it would be rational for her to choose, does it follow that she is acting irrationally?

I hope that some of my co-panelists who think more about decision theory will chime in, but here are a few thoughts.

Cheap first try: it seems plausible that even if every additional dollar brings some marginal utility, by the time we reach, say, a trillion trillion dollars (a septillion dollars) the utility provided by the septiliion+1th dollar is so tiny that the utility cost of worrying about it exceeds the utility it could provide. Of course, that's not really an answer to your question. What you have in mind is a scenario on which it's not just that each additional dollar adds utility, but on which the total area under the utility curve goes to infinity. But it's worth noticing that these are separate ideas. Even if each additional dollar adds value, the infinite sum might still converge to a finite number.

So we can restate the problem this way: there's an infinite well of utility available, and you can choose to have any finite amount of it, but you have to specify the quantity of utiles (where each utile adds a constant amount of utility.) In that case, it seems, no matter what amount you pick, it would have been rational to ask for more; it would always have been possible to increase your payoff by a non-trivial amount. It's a nice problem, but it's not quite clear what it shows. We can agree that no matter what amount you pick it would have been rational to ask for more. But the conclusion you've suggested is stronger: that it would be irrational not to have asked for more. That's not so obvious. Compare: in ordinary situations, it's not clear that people who "satisfice" -- decide to make do with an amount of expected utility that's less than the maximum they could have achieved -- are being irrational.

However, there are some delicate issues here, best left to those who know more than I. Suppose we grant for argument's sake that in the situation you've posed, every option is irrational. Two questions: first, does this show that the very notion of infinite value is incoherent? And second, if the answer is yes, does this show that Pascal's Wager is fatally flawed?

On the first question, the answer is not an obvious yes. After all, suppose you were given this choice: (a) pick nothing; (b) pick a finite amount of utility; (c) pick infinite utility. This decision problem seems to have a clear answer. Why not say that the problem isn't with the idea of infinite utility; the conclusion is simply that if there could be infinite utility, some decision problems would have no good answer, while others would. The ones that do are the ones whose constraints allow you to maximize.

As for Pascal, suppose that what I've just said is wrong, and that the idea of infinite utility really does make no sense. Then certain classic versions of Pascal's wager are incoherent (we'll leave aside what Pascal himself may have had in mind), but there are neighboring arguments that don't simply collapse. Suppose that you are extremely skeptical about God's existence, but allow that it has at least some positive probability ε, however small. Then if the rewards of belief are great enough, assuming God exists, then there's still an "ordinary" expected utility argument in the offing. It's easy to construct little 2x2 tables with appropriate numbers (exercise for the reader), and we don't even need to assume that God would punish non-believers. All that Pascal-style arguments need assume is that what God would have on offer is wonderful enough to swamp other considerations, even given a low value for ε.

Needless to say, there are plenty of other criticisms that Pascal's Wager has to deal with. All that's being suggested here is that the problem of establishing the coherence of infinite utilities need not be one of them.

Yes, at least theoretically. An example of how this might be is given in the first of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes asks us to consider a world that is governed by a kind of evil god who delights in nothing more than making us believe what is false. In such a world, we would be able to find no evidence at all to debunk the falsehoods to which the god inclined us. Descartes challenges us to see if we can be absolutely sure that we do not actually inhabit such a world!

Modern popular culture has taken up this scenario in various entertaining ways. I think it is fair to say that the worlds imagined in "Total Recall," and "The Matrix" are excellent examples of scenarios that raise the theoretical possibility of false belief that is (at least for those who don't escape the Matrix!) invulnerable to refutation.