Rationality

If people who think irrationally are happy and don't have the trouble of thinking about abstruse matters, and thinking rationally brings distress to you, is it irrational, in this case, to be rational?

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How 'irrational' are we talking, here? It's Friday, I've justfinished giving a six-hour long lecture on Kant, which was nearly asdistressing to me as it was to the poor freshmen who had to sitthrough it. Now I'm thirsty. I go to the pub with friends, and drink,and talk about football, holidays, movies – nothing 'abstruse' andcertainly no philosophy. Is this rational or irrational behavior?

Your question is a good one, and it leads us to questions aboutwhether there is any positive or negative relation between studyingphilosophy and happiness. This question has been raised many times inthe history of philosophy, and on this site. As you phrase it,however, I think your question involves an equivocation between'abstruse thinking' and 'rationality'. Plenty of concrete activitiescan be 'rational' (in the broad sense of happening according to law,order, a consideration of means and ends, moral principles orwhatever) without being 'abstruse' (again, in a broad sense ofdifficult to understand because abstract, complex, technical). Forexample, my decision to mow the lawn in adjacent strips (instead ofrandomly) is rational. There is a corresponding equivocation betweenirrational and non-abstruse. Plenty of abstruse things can beirrational (this is virtually a definition of mysticism). This is thepoint of my (sadly hypothetical) scenario above: philosophers willnot make friends and influence people by claiming that onlyphilosophy is rational. Likewise, the philosophical life does notmean 'doing' philosophy all the time.

Your question also raises a nice little problem of action. Is anaction rational because of how it is carried out (in which case beingirrational is never rational), or because of how it is ground in adecision (in which case being irrational, on rational grounds, isindeed rational). One suspects that strictly following either ofthese two definitions will lead to problems that are analogous to the debates between deontological and consequentialist ethics.

Let me add two thoughts to this.

One may distinguish between theoretical and practical rationality. The former employs reason in the service of improving one's understanding and beliefs toward clarity and truth. The latter employs reason toward formulating and achieving ends. Much of the problem you highlight is illuminated by this distinction. Sometimes progress toward clarity and truth hampers our achievement of what we want and have reason to want. For example, when you have a dangerous disease, or find yourself in a life raft without water, you may employ your theoretical rationality to figure out what your chances of survival are. Employing your practical rationality, however, you might conclude that such researches would probably be depressing and would in any case distract you from your goal of getting over the emergency. The practically rational thing might be simply to assume that you can survive this and to throw your full effort into the most plausible option you've got. Beliefs that it is theoretically rational to form and to hold (because they are supported by a careful examination of the evidence) may not be ones that it is practically rational to hold (because forming and holding them will make it harder for you to achieve your reasonable ends). In your terms: When thinking th-irrationally makes you happy and thinking th-rationally brings you distress, then it may be pr-irrational to be th-rational.

We've seen that it may be pr-rational to eschew the path of th-rationality. As Derek Parfit (Reasons and Persons, p. 13) has interestingly discussed, it may also be pr-rational to eschew the path of pr-rationality. Parfit gives the example of a person who is being blackmailed with a threat of violence. The blackmailers are likely to give up when they conclude that the person is too pr-irrational to respond to threats. When the best way to bring the blackmailers to this conclusion is to actually be very pr-irrational, then it may be pr-rational to take a pill that makes one very pr-irrational.

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