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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 12:26 pm
-ofc, and there's vast room to disagree and other ways of thinking about it. I'm content to call it a selective preference so that we don't need to get bogged down with choice. I would also suggest that regardless of whether we do or don't have free will, "choosing life" is a process of rational selection.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 12:31 pm
(August 8, 2021 at 12:26 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: -ofc, and there's vast room to disagree and other ways of thinking about it. I'm content to call it a selective preference so that we don't need to get bogged down with choice. I would also suggest that regardless of whether we do or don't have free will, "choosing life" is a process of rational selection.
Choosing life only becomes rational if we "could have done otherwise." Without it, the term rational loses all meaning.
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 12:42 pm
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2021 at 12:43 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
I like to joke that life is downright kantian with respect to life. A (perceived) categorical imperative. There aren't a whole lot of off switches in life, it's true - but we can grant that cognition is one of them, cant we? That suicidal ideations can and do lead to suicides. It's amusing to think about a crab contemplating life and then throwing itself off a cliff - for example. I think we can and do choose otherwise, but, again, these are often taken to be the effects of significant duress.
I'm using rational in a minimal sense. That to a creature like us, it's rational to select life's continuation, because that state of affairs or conclusion or the conclusion that we should follows from sound assertions genuinely apprehended by cognition.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 9:22 pm
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2021 at 10:08 pm by LadyForCamus.)
(August 8, 2021 at 12:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: If we're homeostats... living creatures with a tendency towards a stable equilibrium - and cognition is a physiological response - then the bare minimum normative case would suggest that a living, competent, and uncompromised cognitive agent should/would register a strong selective preference for life.
Sure, but the instinct to live is just that; a biological instinct. Simply that we can be rational; a de facto attribute or characteristic of being both alive and cognitively capable; isn’t a rational argument for the continuation of life itself, or that the choice to live is somehow a more rational choice than the alternative. At least as far as I can tell. It sounds like you’re saying, “choosing life over death is the rational conclusion because if you stop living you’ll be dead.”
Quote:Which is to say that the choice (and subsequent mountain of natural behaviors) follows from premises genuinely apprehended by that agent, premises which we would grant without qualification - whereas ideation to the contrary would strongly suggest that something has gone horribly awry for that agent.
What premise? That life is preferable to death? Or, that life is “better”
than death? I’d say both of those are ripe for debate.
Quote:Consider this, while we might easily accept any number of rational cases for life, of the relatively few rational cases for death we might accept - do we imagine the person to be thinking clearly?
I would say yes. Not in all cases of course, but yes.
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 9:53 pm
Choosing death is just as rational as choosing life.
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 10:02 pm
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2021 at 10:04 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(August 8, 2021 at 12:31 pm)Angrboda Wrote: (August 8, 2021 at 12:26 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: -ofc, and there's vast room to disagree and other ways of thinking about it. I'm content to call it a selective preference so that we don't need to get bogged down with choice. I would also suggest that regardless of whether we do or don't have free will, "choosing life" is a process of rational selection.
Choosing life only becomes rational if we "could have done otherwise." Without it, the term rational loses all meaning.
I disagree.
Rational agent, X, has no free will. All his actions are determined. X is unaware of these circumstances.
So X goes around making judgments and decisions throughout his life. Some of these decisions are rational. That is, before deciding, X thinks of a premise (or premises) that he thinks are true, and uses them to come up with a conclusion. He then uses that conclusion to inform whether to do one thing or another. He did all this without free will. No incompatibilist argues that people don't think, reason, or use logic. They argue that none of it involves free will.
Other decisions X makes are not rational. Those decisions do not involve X considering premises or conclusions before making a decision. X makes these decisions based on gut, impulse, custom, or what have you.
So rational still has meaning even if we could not do otherwise.
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 10:12 pm
Or maybe a third possibility? X reaches a rational conclusion but does not act or behave in accordance with it.
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 10:17 pm
(August 8, 2021 at 10:12 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Or maybe a third possibility? X reaches a rational conclusion but does not act or behave in accordance with it.
I don't think we have to involve my life story in this.
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 11:29 pm
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2021 at 11:30 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(August 8, 2021 at 9:22 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Sure, but the instinct to live is just that; a biological instinct. Simply that we can be rational; a de facto attribute or characteristic of being both alive and cognitively capable; isn’t a rational argument for the continuation of life itself, or that the choice to live is somehow a more rational choice than the alternative. At least as far as I can tell. It sounds like you’re saying, “choosing life over death is the rational conclusion because if you stop living you’ll be dead.” I don't think that we can dispense with the rationality of a thing purely on account of it also being a biological instinct. It's rational to take a piss when we need to, after all.
Quote:What premise? That life is preferable to death? Or, that life is “better”
than death? I’d say both of those are ripe for debate.
All sorts of rational things are ripe for debate.
Quote:Quote:Consider this, while we might easily accept any number of rational cases for life, of the relatively few rational cases for death we might accept - do we imagine the person to be thinking clearly?
I would say yes. Not in all cases of course, but yes.
This is interesting. In what case (or sort of case) where an animal like us might choose death over life would you be concerned with biological instinct as a dealbreaker - but not whatever duress, misfortune, or abject misery the subject might be considering when making that choice?
More fundamentally, if person can be thinking clearly and rationally choose death, couldn't they do the same for life?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 9, 2021 at 1:29 pm
"More fundamentally, if person can be thinking clearly and rationally choose death, couldn't they do the same for life?" Like in what instance? what if we add a moral imperative.
Person x choses death rationally because of moral imperative Z. The moral imperative overcoming the biological imperative? Interesting conversations, just doing a drive by thought injection.
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