For all our time-poor readers, I can save you the bother of having to read the fascinating but, let’s face it, lengthy forum on rationality at the heart of this issue. If you want to know the nature and value of rationality, here are the short answers. Rational is what I am, and the value of this is that it means I am right more often than not.

Crucially, however, these answers have to be read in the first person. When you read them, “I” is you, not me. We are optimally rational, not other people.

Think about it and I’m sure that most of you will agree. You may well know people who are “cleverer” than you. But all that means, surely, is that their brains work faster and they are better at solving intellectual puzzles. It doesn’t mean that, taken in the round, they are really more rational than you. Their rationality is superior in only one or two narrow senses. On balance, it’s you who is the paradigm of rationality.

Or take other people who are ultra-rational. Don’t you think they are, in fact, too rational? Remember what Aristotle said about virtue lying on a mean: just as you can be too irrational, so you can be too rational. Alfred Mele’s article in this issue (p32) can add grist to this particular mill.

If you are one of these ultra-clever people, you will be unimpressed by these lines of reasoning. You will see that you are actually the most rational person. People who talk about “all-round intelligence” are really just “rationalising” their own weaknesses. So you see again, whoever the “I” is in my answers really is the embodiment of rationality.

If you need any further proof that you are, in fact, optimally rational, just consider your own beliefs. After all, you are right about them, and others are wrong, surely? If you are anti the war in Iraq, then those otherwise intelligent people who think differently have made a mistake. How could they have done this? They just can’t be as rational as you. Perhaps they haven’t thought it through properly, or maybe they are blinded by prejudice or propaganda. Whatever the reason, the fact that you have taken the right stance and they haven’t is testimony to your superior intellect. The same would seem to be the case for the person who is for the war. Chomsky may be a brilliant linguist, but when it comes to international relations, he’s not even competent.

This isn’t just about your beliefs on one issue. Across the board, you believe things because they are true, and your ability to have a set of beliefs which is more true than those who disagree with you is astounding. After all, if there were good reasons to believe what you don’t believe, you would believe it, right? So the fact that you don’t means there are no good enough reasons. Ergo, you only believe what there are good reasons to believe; others believe differently; so you are more rational than they are.

Of course, all this can’t be otherwise. If you thought there was someone who had a better grasp of rationality than you, then surely the sensible thing to do would be to believe what they do. So, you may not understand why it is rational to believe in God, but if someone more rational than you thinks it is, you should just go along with their view. You don’t think you know better than the doctor about medicine. Why think you know better about what is rational to believe than people who are more rational than you? But, of course, you don’t defer to others in this way. Why? Because no one more rational than you exists.

Think about it. If you look at what we hold to be true, how we behave and how we select what we believe and don’t believe, the only explanation is that we each of us thinks that our grasp of what is rational is superior to all others.

But of course, few of us say this is what we think. Who would be so arrogant to make such a claim! Unless, of course, we are not quite rational enough to realise that this is, in fact, what we really think...

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Contributors Ophelia Benson, Charles Booth, Joseph Chandler, Michael Clark, Jonathan Derbyshire, Richard Double, Peter S Fosl, Giles Fraser, Wendy Grossman, Susan Haack, Brad Hooker, Mathew Iredale, Sue Johnson, Michael LaBossiere, Tim LeBon, Alfred Mele, Mark T Nelson, Duncan Pritchard, Nicholas Rescher, Jonathan Salem-Wiseman, Bart Schultz, Leigh Turner, Emrys Westacott, Jamie Whyte.

With Thanks to George Leaman, The Rainnies, Pam Swope.

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© 2004, The Philosophers’ Magazine and contributors ISSN 1354-814X

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The Philosophers' Magazine/2nd quarter 2004