Philosophers often write as if means-end rationality were the factory setting for human agency. More or less efficiently, we act in pursuit of ends. Temptation, depression, anxiety, fear: distortions like these impede the smooth pistoning of the instrumental engine; they prevent us from doing what we will. But for the most part, we are means-end machines. Our ends may not be good ones; but we strive for what we want.
Well, if you attend to anything, you cannot carry on. Or at least not as you did before, whether you’re acting rationally or arationally. I’m afraid there’s no experience that self-awareness can’t ruin.
I liked this quite a bit. There is the old idea that reason is the slave of the (unreasonable) passions, and I've spent decades trying to learn not to send emails. I feel your pain! And surely the vast majority of political argument cannot really be understood in instrumental or even very rational fashion, although its form is rationalistic?
But the deeper point, on which you close, is more important. Most of life, and even the life of the mind, is not particularly rational, though sometimes logics may be discerned. Consider memory, solidarity, appreciation, or even creativity (I do not know what I am trying to write/think).
I think this has long been a problem for philosophy because wisdom => thought=>rationality=>instrumental reason=> formal logic . . . and now we are talking about almost nothing at all, certainly not the human condition, not even the condition of philosophy professors.
All of which leads to the equally long, and probably healthy, tradition of laughing at philosophers. Anyway, nice post, please keep it up!
Is there any experience that self-awareness cannot also improve? It seems to me that non-reactive self-awareness enhances degrees of freedom. Isn't it self-awareness that enables Iris Murdoch's M to see the particular reality of D through her prejudices?
Most of my experience seems arational; it just arises but can be explained means-end rationally. I think of "The Enigma of Reason" by Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier, who argue that reason evolved primarily as a social tool designed to help us justify our actions, convince others, and evaluate the arguments presented by others, facilitating reputation management and cooperation.
Yet, for Hursthouse, the idea is to cultivate one's dispositions and emotions to harmonize with reasons, and to become the kind of person who tends to be "reactive" in the right way, on the right grounds. That goal is not in any way opposed practical rationality. Rather, the project is to embody practical rationality, even in one's emotional and "reactive" being.
Right! The terminology "arational" is unfortunate, since acting from emotion need not be non-rational, let alone irrational, even if its rationality eludes the means-end form philosophers often assume as a lowest common denominator.
I think this is an important observation, and should lead us to give more weight to efforts to improve instrumental rationality, especially in ethics. I wrote a brief reply expanding upon this point, here: https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/explicit-ethics
1) Even the seemingly irrational reaction can be rational In some cases - either because it is the only thing you can do given your emotional state (which I think is rational if ought implies can) or if doing so would relieve you of the emotional distress (perhaps in a lot of cases, this isn’t properly accounting for the cost-benefit analysis, however).
2) From my understanding, philosophers don’t often claim that we are descriptively means-end machines (though let me know if you think I am wrong about that); they claim that we ought to be as that is what you would do under more ideal reflection. I think very few people would disagree that there are often motivational constraints blocking us from achieving what we want, for example.
If I’m misunderstanding or mischaracterizing your argument, let me know!
On (2): you are right that philosophers don't typically say "we are descriptively means-end machines." But I think they tend to assume that failures of instrumental reason involve having an end but being unable to follow through due to emotional interference. One thing I find interesting about the examples I start with is that they don't fit that model. They aren't cases in which I am aware that temptation or fear is getting in the way but ones in which instrumental reasoning seems to be subverted altogether. I don't set an end and then struggle to take the means. Instead, I don't properly set an end at all. That's why the question "What am I trying to achieve?" stops me short.
In a typical philosopher's fashion, I wonder whether there might be two different distinctions in this area. One is between arational and rational behavior, the other is between instrumental and non-instrumental behavior. As you acknowledge, arational behavior can be instrumental - I think the clearest example is acting on addictive cravings, which often shows very sophisticated means-end planning in order to get one's fix.
More interesting for your post is the non-instrumental rational category: behavior that's guided by rational processes but not in a means-end structure. The clearest example to me here is our use of language: when I'm in conversation (or typing this post), my word choice isn't guided by at least explicit means-end reasoning. But it's not arational either. It's instead guided rationally by the non-instrumental norms of conversation - norms of grammar, Grice-style norms of pragmatics, epistemic norms, etc. I think any activity guided by constitutive norms - games, dances, maybe stand-up comedy! - is going to show this structure.
I suspect these two distinctions are genuinely cross-cutting, in the sense that both our instrumentally and non-instrumentally structured behaviors are sometimes driven by automatic, arational processes and sometimes by controlled rational processes. One last interesting thing: often these two are not opposed but go hand in hand. Again language is my go-to example: when I'm lecturing, I'm often struck by how automatic and involuntary the process that constructs my sentences is. But - at least hopefully! - my lecture is a rational activity.
Thanks for a very thought-provoking post, as usual!
Well, if you attend to anything, you cannot carry on. Or at least not as you did before, whether you’re acting rationally or arationally. I’m afraid there’s no experience that self-awareness can’t ruin.
I liked this quite a bit. There is the old idea that reason is the slave of the (unreasonable) passions, and I've spent decades trying to learn not to send emails. I feel your pain! And surely the vast majority of political argument cannot really be understood in instrumental or even very rational fashion, although its form is rationalistic?
But the deeper point, on which you close, is more important. Most of life, and even the life of the mind, is not particularly rational, though sometimes logics may be discerned. Consider memory, solidarity, appreciation, or even creativity (I do not know what I am trying to write/think).
I think this has long been a problem for philosophy because wisdom => thought=>rationality=>instrumental reason=> formal logic . . . and now we are talking about almost nothing at all, certainly not the human condition, not even the condition of philosophy professors.
All of which leads to the equally long, and probably healthy, tradition of laughing at philosophers. Anyway, nice post, please keep it up!
Is there any experience that self-awareness cannot also improve? It seems to me that non-reactive self-awareness enhances degrees of freedom. Isn't it self-awareness that enables Iris Murdoch's M to see the particular reality of D through her prejudices?
Most of my experience seems arational; it just arises but can be explained means-end rationally. I think of "The Enigma of Reason" by Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier, who argue that reason evolved primarily as a social tool designed to help us justify our actions, convince others, and evaluate the arguments presented by others, facilitating reputation management and cooperation.
Yet, for Hursthouse, the idea is to cultivate one's dispositions and emotions to harmonize with reasons, and to become the kind of person who tends to be "reactive" in the right way, on the right grounds. That goal is not in any way opposed practical rationality. Rather, the project is to embody practical rationality, even in one's emotional and "reactive" being.
Right! The terminology "arational" is unfortunate, since acting from emotion need not be non-rational, let alone irrational, even if its rationality eludes the means-end form philosophers often assume as a lowest common denominator.
I think this is an important observation, and should lead us to give more weight to efforts to improve instrumental rationality, especially in ethics. I wrote a brief reply expanding upon this point, here: https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/explicit-ethics
I enjoyed this a lot. Two points I would make.
1) Even the seemingly irrational reaction can be rational In some cases - either because it is the only thing you can do given your emotional state (which I think is rational if ought implies can) or if doing so would relieve you of the emotional distress (perhaps in a lot of cases, this isn’t properly accounting for the cost-benefit analysis, however).
2) From my understanding, philosophers don’t often claim that we are descriptively means-end machines (though let me know if you think I am wrong about that); they claim that we ought to be as that is what you would do under more ideal reflection. I think very few people would disagree that there are often motivational constraints blocking us from achieving what we want, for example.
If I’m misunderstanding or mischaracterizing your argument, let me know!
Agree about (1): "arational" is not the best terminology for what might be justified behaviour. (Something similar came up in Joe Neisser's comment.)
On (2): you are right that philosophers don't typically say "we are descriptively means-end machines." But I think they tend to assume that failures of instrumental reason involve having an end but being unable to follow through due to emotional interference. One thing I find interesting about the examples I start with is that they don't fit that model. They aren't cases in which I am aware that temptation or fear is getting in the way but ones in which instrumental reasoning seems to be subverted altogether. I don't set an end and then struggle to take the means. Instead, I don't properly set an end at all. That's why the question "What am I trying to achieve?" stops me short.
In a typical philosopher's fashion, I wonder whether there might be two different distinctions in this area. One is between arational and rational behavior, the other is between instrumental and non-instrumental behavior. As you acknowledge, arational behavior can be instrumental - I think the clearest example is acting on addictive cravings, which often shows very sophisticated means-end planning in order to get one's fix.
More interesting for your post is the non-instrumental rational category: behavior that's guided by rational processes but not in a means-end structure. The clearest example to me here is our use of language: when I'm in conversation (or typing this post), my word choice isn't guided by at least explicit means-end reasoning. But it's not arational either. It's instead guided rationally by the non-instrumental norms of conversation - norms of grammar, Grice-style norms of pragmatics, epistemic norms, etc. I think any activity guided by constitutive norms - games, dances, maybe stand-up comedy! - is going to show this structure.
I suspect these two distinctions are genuinely cross-cutting, in the sense that both our instrumentally and non-instrumentally structured behaviors are sometimes driven by automatic, arational processes and sometimes by controlled rational processes. One last interesting thing: often these two are not opposed but go hand in hand. Again language is my go-to example: when I'm lecturing, I'm often struck by how automatic and involuntary the process that constructs my sentences is. But - at least hopefully! - my lecture is a rational activity.
Thanks for a very thought-provoking post, as usual!