Practical Irrationality

In Nascimento (2015) I criticized the thesis defended in Irwin (1983) according to which two of the most famous characters in Euripides' plays, Phaedra and Medea, could be said to exemplify akratic behavior and, in the case of Phaedra, even to explain it. In that article, I've pointed out several weakness in these thesis in order to justify my disagreement. I also suggested that, although there was no reason why we should stop looking for examples and explanations of akratic behavior in Euripides' plays, that should not be the only kind of irrational behavior we ought to be interested in finding there. In this paper, I argue that Medea actually instantiates a form of irrational behavior that is different from akratic behavior. The argument that follows is divided in four parts. After a brief introduction (section I), I clarify what sort of irrationality I believe to be instantiated by Medea's behavior using Michael Bratman's theory of plan stability (section II). Then, I analyze Euripides' text in order to show why I think we should say that Medea does display that kind of irrationality (section III). The paper concludes with a brief summary of the argument (section IV).

The present paper proposes an integrative account of social forms of practical irrationality and corresponding disruptions of individual and group-level emotion regulation. I will especially focus on disruptions in emotion regulation by means of collaborative agential and doxastic akrasia. I begin by distinguishing mutual, communal and collaborative forms of akrasia. Such a taxonomy seems all the more needed as, rather surprisingly, in the face of huge philosophical interest in analysing the possibility, structure and mechanisms of individual practical irrationality, with very little exception, there are no comparable accounts of social and collaborative cases. However, I believe that, if it is true that individual akrasia is, in the long run, harmful for those who entertain it, this is even more so in social contexts. I will illustrate this point by drawing on various small group settings, and explore a number of socio-psychological mechanisms underlying collaborative irrationality, in particular groupthink. Specifically, I suggest that in collaborative cases there is what I call a spiralling of practical irrationality at play. I will argue that this is typically correlated and indeed partly due to biases in individual members' affect control and eventually the group's with whom the members identify.

There are certain 'hard cases' of weakness of will that seem to occur, indeed to be common, but are very difficult to give a non-paradoxical account of.  It is just not clear how they are possible.  This paper is largely an attempt to get them in focus.  What conditions must such weak-willed actions satisfy?  In what sense must they be intentional, for example?  And must the weak-willed agent thinks his action objectively worse than some alternative action open to him?  And must that alternative action actually be open to him?  The paper concludes by considering the condition that a clear case of weakness of will must be in certain sense non-procrastinatory and this turns out to be particularly difficult to satisfy.  Other explanations, ones that do not postulate weakness of will (though they may involve paradoxes of their own), always seem to be available.

The philosophical questons about action concern its nature, its description and its explanation. The leading question are "Waht a theory of action is possible?", "Are reasons causes?", "What are practical thoughts?" and "What is the formal logic of practical inference?". Gerhard Preyer offers new answers of some old question about the description and the explanation of action and the logical structure of deliberation or practical reasoning which results from the theory of action since the 1950s years. It is argued that a theory of agent can provide an alternative to any theory postulating actions as irreducible entities metaphysically. The author's account presents intentions as states irreducible to beliefs and desires. The analysis places also a requirement on a fruitful description of the mind-body problem.
Audience:
Teachers and students (graduate and advanced undergraduate) in philosophy, particulary in the filed of philosophy of action, mind and moral philosophy. Also of interest to sociologists and psychologists. Can be used as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate courses in philosophy of action.

https://humanities.verlags-shop.de/philosophie/intention-and-practical-thought---296.html

Philosophie und Psychoanalyse unterhalten seit Sigmund Freuds Lebzeiten ein spannungsvolles Verhältnis. Die damit einhergehenden Diskussionen tendieren jedoch immer wieder dazu, die Disziplinen gegeneinander auszuspielen oder sie aneinander anzugleichen.
Dieses Buch stellt sich der Herausforderung, einen disziplinenübergreifenden Standpunkt jenseits solcher Einseitigkeiten zu identifizieren, von dem philosophische wie psychoanalytische Perspektiven in Hinblick auf ihr ethisches Denken und ihr kritisches Selbstverständnis profitieren können. Den Ausgangs- und Schwerpunkt bildet dabei ein philosophisches Unbehagen gegenüber aktuellen philosophischen Ansätzen, die ein Ideal praktischer Vernünftigkeit propagieren, demzufolge sich gelingendes Person-Sein aus einer abstrakten Vorstellung reflexiver Distanznahme ableiten lässt.
Im ersten Kapitel wird der Ansatz von Christine Korsgaard als exemplarischer Fall dieses Vorgehens diskutiert. Die weitere Argumentation ergibt sich aus den Überlegungen, dass dieses Ideal der Vielfalt praktischer Vernunftausübung und Selbstbestimmung nicht gerecht werden kann und dass dieser Umstand wesentlich mit einer fehlenden Praxis methodologischer Selbstreflexion zusammenhängt. Der erste Punkt wird anhand des Phänomens praktischer Irrationalität diskutiert, dessen Relevanz für menschliche Lebenswirklichkeiten von den abstrakten Idealisierungen praktischer Vernünftigkeit nicht erfasst werden kann. Der zweite Punkt impliziert eine Hinterfragung des philosophischen Standpunkts als paradigmatischer Verkörperung von Vernunft als reflexiver Distanznahme, die über eine Konfrontation mit psychoanalytischer Theorie und Praxis schließlich zu einer philosophischen Perspektive zurück führt, deren Potential sich gerade in der Kritik ihrer eigenen Rationalitätsansprüche entfaltet. In der Zusammenführung dieser Punkte unter Berücksichtigung von Autoren wie Martin Seel, Sebastian Gardner oder Jonathan Lear gewinnt so ein Bild von Irrationalität Kontur, bei dem die philosophisch-ästhetische Erkundung psychoanalytischer Erzählungen das Potential dieses Phänomens hervortreten lässt, Selbstbestimmungspraktiken als Wagnis zu bereichern.

In an earlier paper, 'Peter Geach on nonsense, confusion and sin' 1 , I suggested that what one can say in explanation of one's own actions suffers from a severe limitation: one can shed little light on the question why one acted on one's reasons for an action rather than on one's reasons against that action. In this paper I want to explore this suggestion further. One of my tasks will be to distinguish my question from three standard philosophical questions that have tended to overshadow it: the question of freewill and determinism; that of the relation between fact and value; and that of the possibility of weakness of will. On these I shall, on the whole, maintain a studied agnosticism.

There is stock argument against libertarianism: that the indeterminism it postulates makes human choice a matter of chance and this is no better as a basis for practical rationality and moral responsibility than the most rigid determinism.  I suggest that a similar problem arises on deterministic assumptions: although human choice is no longer a matter of mere chance, it remains arbitrary since whatever explains a person’s choice to act on the reasons for an action rather than those against, it is not a matter of reasons that were reasons FOR THAT PERSON.  The explanatory gap is closed in the wrong way for the impression of sheer arbitrariness to be cancelled.  I discuss (via a digression on F. H. Bradley) whether Davidson’s ‘anomalous monism’ would, if correct, necessitate any modification to this conclusion.  I also ask how the problem addressed in this paper relates to Galen Strawson’s rejection of the possibility of complete autonomy or self-determination.

Der Beitrag folgt der These, dass die ästhetische Dimension des vernünftigen Standpunkts das zentrale Element einer angemessenen Perspektive darauf bildet, wie das Zusammenspiel von Rationalität und Irrationalität zur praktischen Selbstbestimmung als Person beitragen kann. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Position, die normativen Implikationen praktischer Vernünftigkeit und Selbstbestimmung ließen sich aus einem abstrakten Moment der reflexiven Distanznahme ableiten. Der Blick auf Christine Korsgaards Version dieser Idee macht deutlich, dass die dabei aktualisierte Vorstellung des praktischen Standpunkts sowohl einer mangelnden methodologischen Reflexion anheimfällt, als auch der Besonderheit irrationaler Handlungen und Erfahrungen nicht gerecht zu werden vermag. Der weitere Text zeigt auf, dass die Suche nach einer alternativen Konzeption, die beide Aspekte berücksichtigt, von einer Gegenüberstellung mit der Psychoanalyse profitiert, da diese in der Lage ist, die Philosophie auf das originäre Potential zurück zu verweisen, dass sie in ihren ästhetischen Perspektiven auf praktische Standpunkte zu entfalten vermag.

The article follows the hypothesis that the aesthetic dimension of the standpoint of reason provides the main element for an appropriate perspective on how the interplay between rationality and irrationality is able to contribute to practical self-determination as a person. The starting point is formed by the critical discussion of the position considering that it is possible to derive the normative implications of practical reasonableness and self-determination from an abstract momentum of reflective distance. Whilst taking a look on Christine Korsgaard’s version of this idea it becomes clear that it rests on a conception of the practical standpoint that suffers both from a lack of methodological self-reflection and from neglecting the special features and potentials of irrational actions and experiences. The following text shows how the search for an alternative conception, which takes both aspects into account, benefits from a comparison with psychoanalysis, since this discipline is able to methodologically refer back philosophy to the original potential it unfolds in its aesthetic perspectives on practical standpoints.

Saggio di DANILO CARUSO / Palermo, ottobre 2016

Indice
Introduzione pag. 1
1. Teoria sull’origine aliena dell’umanità pag. 2
2.1. Il gioco capitalista degli Elohiym falsi e bugiardi pag. 4
2.2. Il parricidio marxiano di Locke figlio d’Abramo pag. 12
3.1. La lancia di Atena pag. 19
3.2. La nuova Sparta pag. 22
4.1. Distopia all’italiana pag. 25
4.2. Una distopia reichiana pag. 27

Since it is hard to see how subjective rationality could be normative, a humbler, purely evaluative account of rationality’s importance has been suggested: rationality is a non-moral virtue, and rational action is good so far as it reveals that an agent ‘functions well’. This paper argues, however, that even this fallback position is threatened by ‘eccentric billionaire’ scenarios: sometimes, flouting purported coherence standards of rationality is maximally virtuous. In defense of the virtue account, I argue that a novel view of rational constraints is called for: rationality requires a certain form of higher-order coherence – as considerations about instrumental coherence can show.