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Questions in Rationality
(48)
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Do some people believe their own lies?
November 5, 2009
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Is hope ever not irrational?
October 13, 2009
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Suppose an angel visits me tonight and tells me that when I reach the age of 60, I will suddenly find great enjoyment in the music of Kenny G. The ...
October 8, 2009
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A long time ago - Jan 2006 if I'm not mistaken - Alan Soble wrote (http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/875): "Finally, the heart and soul of philosophy is argument, providing reasons for claims, including ...
August 30, 2009
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I am perplexed by Alexander George's recent posting (http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/2854). He says "Your observation that we sometimes take pleasure in beliefs even if they have been irrationally arrived at seems correct ...
September 3, 2009
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When is rational to say "I do not have an explanation for this event, but the explanation you propose is not a good one." For example, my friend (hypothetically) believes ...
August 22, 2009
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Can somebody oppose physical pain (felt by other people) and be indifferent to other kinds of suffering without being irrational? I'm affraid that the answer is "yes": you can hate ...
July 27, 2009
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Richard Dawkins wrote in his “The Selfish Gene,” that people are essentially biological robots. If he is right then all of our thoughts are simply the result of cerebral and ...
April 1, 2009
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When two people disagree, is there always one right person and one wrong person?
November 23, 2008
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Can one learn to be rational? How would this be done?
November 13, 2008
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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