I. Introduction
The view that some forms of irrationality may serve a useful purpose is being
increasingly entertained, despite the disquiet it elicits. The reason for the disquiet
isn't difficult to discern, for if the view were made good it might threaten the
unqualified normative primacy that rationality enjoys in the evaluation of thoughts,
beliefs, intentions, decisions and actions. In terms of the predominant "rational
explanation" model, reasons both generate and justify actions, and carrying out the
dictates of reason is held up as an ideal. If it can be shown that under some
circumstances or for certain types of action irrational elements or procedures would
produce "all things considered" better results, this would put these
deliberative "ideals" in question.
Nozick (1993), going deeper, advances the view that we accord rationality intrinsic
value (over and above its instrumental value), because deciding and believing in a way
that is responsive to "the net balance of reasons" has come to form an important
part of human identity.
We value a person's believing and deciding rationally in a way that is
responsive to the net balance of reasons, and we think that is good and admirable in
itself, perhaps because so deciding and believing uses our high and intricate capacities
and expresses them, or perhaps because that embodies an admirable and principled integrity
in guiding beliefs and actions by reasons, not by the whims or desires of the moment.
(Nozick 1993: 136)
In this paper I want to explore whether such entrenched assumptions and intuitions
preempt a coherent account of functional irrationality, or whether, despite the
presumption against it, it can be defended within the purview of traditional conceptions
of rationality and reason.
II. On the very possibility of irrationality
The claim that beneficial results are to be had from irrationality is up against
difficult odds, (2) which are aggravated by a longstanding
tradition opposed to the mere possibility of irrationality — one which alleges that
even the attempt to describe the supposed examples engenders paradoxes which can be
dissolved only if redescriptions foregoing assumptions of irrationality are provided.
This scepticism about irrationality derives much of its initial plausibility from a
central assumption of the traditional conception of rationality, viz., that consistency in
and between an agent's beliefs, desires, intentions, judgements, and so on is a necessary
condition for the intelligibility of her conduct or behaviour. (3)
But of late, this assumption is coming into question (4)
and relations between these elements other than the purely "rational" are
sometimes admitted as significant. (5) In addition, the view
of these mental elements as homogeneous atoms has been challenged by analyses which
ascribe to them complex internal structures and (corresponding) genetic histories. (6)
So it seems that the way has been paved for analyses of irrationality in terms of which
the lack of fit between, e.g., beliefs, desires, judgements, intentions and actions is
responsible for the varieties of irrationality, including akrasia and self-deception (the
former manifesting a breakdown between evaluative judgement and ensuing action, the latter
a breakdown between evidence and belief).
Amélie Rorty's work, for example creates a space for such studies by challenging the
assumptions which cast doubt on the existence of genuine irrationality. This space
accommodates not only "apparently anomalous psychological activities" (Rorty
1988: 195), but also the resources and mechanisms that contribute centrally to
psychological well-being and which form part of necessary conditions for proper
functioning, e.g., self-transformation. (8)
It may however be questioned whether in the end such accounts accommodate genuine
irrationality. Such phenomena as sticking to principles, which could seem irrational when
viewed in isolation, can be construed as a device which works in the service of an
ultimately rational end if the net is cast sufficiently widely. This might require an
increase in the range of beliefs, desires, etc. included in the account, and a recognition
of relations between beliefs other than evidential support or fit. However, a suitably
rich notion of rationality ought to be able to accommodate a wider variety of such
psychological relations.
But this invites the response that a situation which includes irrationality that can be
thus accommodated still turns out to be less rational than one which involves no
irrationality at all. To make a case for functional irrationality it must be possible to
find tolerable the idea that, as Nozick puts it,
... a total package of such apparently irrational tendencies [could] even work
better together than the total package of apparently — when separately considered
— rational tendencies (25), (9)
and this, it seems would require that we defeat Davidson's (1985: 148) claim that
Nothing can be viewed as a good reason for failing to reason according to one's
best standards of rationality.
Nozick insists on the possibility that our expectations of rational connections between
beliefs and evidence, decisions and action and so on may fail in such a way as to result
("paradoxically") in more effective action or more desirable consequences than
rationality could have secured. (10) Taking sunk costs and
symbolic values into account, adhering to principles, although violating standard decision
theory may result in richer, more rewarding lives (through promoting integration both
contemporaneous and temporal).
Annette Baier's discussions of trust also raise telling questions about the rationality
of going along with "unjustified" attitudes. In answer to the question "Why
would rational persons make themselves vulnerably dependent on others?", it is clear
that from the perspective of rationality the answer must be that there is no good reason.
Nonetheless the "...innate readiness of infants to initially impute goodwill to
the powerful persons on whom they depend" (Baier 1994/5: 107) is a precondition for
survival and for the possibility of later, more conscious, forms of trust. Lest it be
suggested that this is a situation applying only to our immature condition, Baier (1994/5:
172-3) points out that even the agreements of the contract situation rely implicitly on a
more primitive assumption of trusting.
Unless one trusts one's fellow discussants to be engaged, as she purports to be,
in the same enterprise as oneself ...then the whole justificatory discourse becomes a
farce, or a contest of wills.... Until we can trust those with whom we are talking...no
justificatory discourse can be sustained, no principles get ratified or vetoed....Some
more basic sort of fidelity must already be implicitly recognized and exhibited in our
speech behaviour if our putative acceptances and rejections of principles are to carry any
force. If they do not, then nothing that we say about our acceptance or rejection of
proposed principles will be worth the wind it is written on.
Why call such trusting irrational in spite of its desirable consequences? Because those
consequences, desirable as they might be, could not be a good reason for that trust.
III. Explaining the functionality of (some forms of) irrationality
Given the assumption that there are clear cases of functional irrationality, how is
this to be explained? An answer to this seems to be suggested by some of the attempts to
account for the existence of irrationality as such. Some forms of irrationality are
causally necessary conditions of possibility of rationality, developmental, temporal or
otherwise. While not themselves meeting criteria for rational thought and action, they
make it possible for their conditions to be established.
The approach to rationality that emphasises the "irrational" means employed
in achieving it results in a conception of rationality that is more differentiated and
complex than the traditional one, and which is more able to cope with the phenomena.
Accounts of non-rational psychological mechanisms and strategies allow for a view of
rationality as something gradually and indirectly attained, for otherwise inexplicable or
problematic mental phenomena as pre-rational stages or constituents or conditions of
rational end-states. Rorty (1988: 262) makes an eloquent case for an enriched conception
of rationality:
Even when a person takes rationality to be more than a crucial criterion for the
legitimation of his various ends, even when he takes the exercise of rationality to be the
end with which he primarily identifies himself, it cannot provide the sole or sufficient
principle of choice. It cannot by itself provide the range of aims and directions required
for a recognizably human life....the standard story of rational agency requires strong
modification. Not only are human agents more complex and conflicted than the naive
accounts of rational agency project, but the various functions of rationality in agency
are themselves often in latent conflict. The psychological strategies exercised in
self-deception and akrasia operate quite independently of rationality. That, indeed, is
precisely their contribution to rational action: a rational agent could not do without
them. Such an agent would have no focus for attention: his psychological field would be
nonperspectival, without preference. He would be a rational agent, without any reason to
act this way rather than that.
Must we nevertheless insist on asking whether the conceptual space for such a
conception (and its attendant motivational aetiology) would be acquired at the expense of
privileged connections between evaluative judgement and intentional action? Davidson's
(1982: 303) expressed the problem thus:
The underlying paradox of irrationality, from which no theory can entirely
escape, is this: if we explain it too well, we turn it into a concealed form of
rationality; while if we assign incoherence too glibly, we merely compromise our ability
to diagnose irrationality by withdrawing the background rationality needed to justify any
diagnosis at all.
The trick is not to explain the phenomena so well that one loses them.
So perhaps invoking functionalist explanations, does too much too soon. For it allows
the assumption that there are limits to reason (perhaps even constitutive ones) that leave
room for understandable, intelligible, even justifiable irrationality.
What pull should we allow the traditional conception to exert? That its influence is
considerable is obvious: we find it very difficult to allow that forming a belief in the
face of counter-evidence could be preferable to desisting from doing so, or to imagine
circumstances in which this would be epistemically warranted. (11)
Furthermore, we are hard pressed to find grounds on which to commit ourselves
unequivocally to a general policy of supporting less than fully rational procedures. (12)
Rationality exerts great normative force. Even psychoanalysis, the discipline most
dedicated to the exploration of irrational phenomena attests to this. For a central goal
of clinical work in psychoanalysis is to bring the analys and to the point where she can
recognise and acknowledge the underlying rationality of her irrationalities. But in
scrutinising this reluctance to admit irrationality we need to recognise that it may well
be rooted in deep but unjustified assumptions about human nature. As Jon Elster (1989)
insists, the belief in the omnipotence of reason, the expectation that it will yield
unique prescriptions and predictions, is just another form of irrationality. Rationality
itself requires us to recognise the limitation of our rational powers (Elster 1989: 17),
As in Kant's critique, the first task of reason is to recognize its own
limitations and draw the boundaries within which it can operate
and such circumscription could well have the effect of legitimating some forms of
irrationality.
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