Are "logical" and "rational" objective classifications of a person's actions?
February 22, 2015 at 9:48 pm
(I had posted this on another forum, but got no responses for almost two weeks. Any coding issues are from having copied this text in its entirety and only glancing at it to fix them)
I've been thinking about how, if someone acts based on emotion, their actions are called "irrational" and/or "illogical". However, are those terms objectively applicable (by which I mean to ask if we can objectively say that a course of action would have been rational and/or logical instead of what occurred)? IMO, you could say the person was overcome with an emotion and acted based on that emotion, but nothing more. If the end-result was achieved, though, was it a poor choice (from a logical and/or rational standpoint)? Here's a less vague hypothetical scenario so you can understand what I mean.
Person A's wife is killed by a random street thug. The police do nothing, as they always have. Overwhelmed with grief and wanting to keep the streets safe (by lowering the crime rate), person A becomes a vigilante and kills every criminal he/she can find. Crime goes down, but everyone is scared. Once A is caught, the police are pressured into acting, and so the streets stay safe without further bloodshed.
Was A's action irrational or illogical? After all, their goal was achieved - the streets are safer. Of course, A was arrested, but the result was the same: safer streets. We could argue that this is really about the ends justifying the means, but that's a subjective issue.
So, to reiterate: Are "logical" and "rational" objective classifications of a person's actions? Why/Why not?
I've been thinking about how, if someone acts based on emotion, their actions are called "irrational" and/or "illogical". However, are those terms objectively applicable (by which I mean to ask if we can objectively say that a course of action would have been rational and/or logical instead of what occurred)? IMO, you could say the person was overcome with an emotion and acted based on that emotion, but nothing more. If the end-result was achieved, though, was it a poor choice (from a logical and/or rational standpoint)? Here's a less vague hypothetical scenario so you can understand what I mean.
Person A's wife is killed by a random street thug. The police do nothing, as they always have. Overwhelmed with grief and wanting to keep the streets safe (by lowering the crime rate), person A becomes a vigilante and kills every criminal he/she can find. Crime goes down, but everyone is scared. Once A is caught, the police are pressured into acting, and so the streets stay safe without further bloodshed.
Was A's action irrational or illogical? After all, their goal was achieved - the streets are safer. Of course, A was arrested, but the result was the same: safer streets. We could argue that this is really about the ends justifying the means, but that's a subjective issue.
So, to reiterate: Are "logical" and "rational" objective classifications of a person's actions? Why/Why not?
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Why settle for normal, when you can be so much more? Why settle for something, when you can have everything?
