(August 31, 2019 at 5:58 pm)Belaqua Wrote:(August 31, 2019 at 3:46 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: If we base it on what's rational to the individual, then we have to qualify every imaginable psychotic behavior as rational.
Maybe so, depending on our precise definition of "rational."
If rational means something like "internally consistent based on the premises given," then a rational thought process might end up with something very wrong.
Given the premises that were almost universally accepted in medieval Europe, for example, Christian believers were entirely rational. To us, they were wrong, because we have different premises.
But it may be that people are psychotic because their thinking isn't in fact rational. The results don't follow from their premises. I know a very sad woman who finds her kitchen messy in the morning, and based on this true fact, concludes that the Prime Minister broke into her house over night. This is psychotic and not rational.
As I said earlier, 'rational' and 'right' don't always coincide. One can be rational and still be monumentally wrong.
Again, I am simply addressing the claim that because a notion is rational to one person that it fits any accepted meaning of the term 'rational'.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
