Irrational beliefs
Suppose I believe in making decisions based on which kind of bird I see first thing in the morning, and that I believe this due to my own unpublished scientific research.
Is this an irrational belief?
Is this an irrational belief?
Comments (61)
But I guess it rather depends on what decisions, and what research. If you are a hunter, it might be reasonable to base your lunch recipe on what bird you come across.
The logic maybe correct. The background beliefs definitely differ.
People who behave in the way you describe are working from a set of beliefs that they haven't subjected to scrutiny. People who reject such a worldview have.
Rationality is a fundamentally contested term, so it's difficult to give a clear answer.
In terms of purely instrumental rationality, it's not irrational. In terms of rationality as a more general faculty of applying your mental resources in an effective (for solving problems) and non-contradictory manner, it probably is irrational.
That's a fun question! It sounds like a subjective truth that one has... .
Why were you thinking that would be considered irrational?
Since you put it in the context of a scientific belief of sorts, I'm guessing you're wondering if a synthetic proposition is irrational , no?
Interesting association. I disagree with calling it "objective", but it is connected to rationality. I have said elsewhere that I think the difference between mere preferences and moral statements is that the latter are reasonable, that is that they're open to some intersubjective process of checking their internal structure on the basis of shared human mental structures. That would be an application of reason. Is rationality a correct, which is to say internally consistent for humans in general, application of reason?
Sure sounds pretty whacky. ‘Ah! A blue jay! I must take the Eastern Distributor today.’
The thing about rationality, in the narrow procedural sense, is that it is completely sealed. It is a game that you play by the rules that you and your fellow participants agree to follow. You cannot get out of it anything other than what you put into it in the first place when you agreed on the rules. The choice of the rules and the decision to stick to them are not rational though (unless they are the outcome of some other rational game, but that only pushes the problem back one step).
I agree, I think we need more information. OP can you please share more information?
I....CAN NOT....COMPUTE.....BE....CAUSE...IT...IS..... SOMEWHERE....BETWEEN...A...LOL!
So, do you think there is a meaning of rationality outside the narrow procedural sense? Or would you use a more general term like "reason"?
If we take the scientific method as an example, would you say the method itself is rational, or merely that we can rationally apply the method? And if the method is not itself "rational", then how do we describe it's justification?
What would the broader sense be?
Quoting SophistiCat
Why?
Is it rational to believe you won't fall into a fiery pit?
Quoting unenlightened
I was trying to evoke a superstitious belief. There is such a thing as using birds as omens.
But suppose I learned this superstition from a community of white magic practitioners (it used to be common). It's been scrutinized. Is it rational now?
As long as an approach is effective and non-contradictory, it could be called rational?
What’s irrational is seeking or expecting a verifiable objective account of a decision making process by that which is not, and can never be, a first-person perspective.
The best I can say is that, given the available information and given my experience, it would be entirely irrational for me make my decisions under those conditions. Far as I’m concerned, you can make your decisions any ol’ way you want.
I do have to wonder though.....what does your research say about not seeing the right kind of bird? If your house is on fire, but there’s not a speckled finch to be found........
Just exploring what it means to hold a belief irrationally.
The bird is a sign. We use signs all the time. If it's cloudy, I take it as a sign that it might rain. I don't have to understand what clouds are or how they relate to rain to use clouds in this way.
But if I do, is it irrational?
Nope. As I said, make your decisions.....read your signs....any way you like.
Do I think it irrational? Maybe. Do I think you should think it irrational? Nahhhh. I don’t care, unless you rain on my parade somehow.
"Just exploring what it means to hold a belief irrationally. "
Oh, ok, gotcha. Well one short example or analogy would be saying something like: I believe the sun will rise tomorrow.
Is that irrational? I would say no because it's not a contradiction (p and not- p).
( You can reasonably believe that the sun will rise tommorow because you've seen the sun rise before. But their is no guarantee that it will rise again.)
However, I think it would be in the category of a Kantian synthetic a priori ' belief' or truth statement.
Kind of similar to the statement that: all events must have a cause.
A statement like that is something beyond pure reason, but certainly not irrational.
'Rationality' is in the eye of the beholder unless put up for scrutiny, as you do, in which case 'consensus' operates.
So before 'the question' your rationality stands.
After 'the question' your methodology including your research techniques are open to the criticism you would obviously expect.
The belief is rational. You can believe all you want. You could even believe that god exists, and nobody can stop you from that.
Basing decisions on beliefs can be rational. For instance, if the first bird you see is a frizbee, you know it's a good day and you will plan some outdoor activities. If the first bird you see is a few vultures circling in the sky, then you know that a hot lunch is lying there somewhere near your abode.
Furthermore, if you decide that if you first see a dove, you'll asl Julia to marry you, and if you see a crow, then you will ask the old crownie next door to marry you, is still not an irrational decision-- it is a noncongruent decision.
Noncongruence bears randomness, which is not counter-reason.
I wouldn't make such a definitive statement. My few words were just a brief, back of the envelope kind of description.
What I meant to hint at is that "rationality" can be understood rather broadly, and this broad understanding would include, for example, avoiding known biases in human thinking (e.g. confirmation bias) assessing the weight of evidence and possibly making moral assessments.
Practice says, yes. Just one more addition you'd need: repeatable. And you need to be able to figure it out intuitively. I think this makes a thought rational.
....yes, which could be construed as "inductive reasoning."
Next question lol
On the surface, it appears as though there is nothing rational about your choice. However, we do not know that the reason you make your decisions based off the type of bird you see is that you believe this will give you the best chance at making good decisions. If we knew that, I think we could say you're being irrational because there is no logical reason to believe this to be true. If you were doing this for some other reason, we'd have to re-evaluate.
I think this is a case of ambiguity arising from lack of information that is confusing some of the other posters.
First off, you said you've done some appropriate research, so your way of doing things sounds justified, which I guess means it's rational. I'm going to ignore that and talk instead about what would happen if your belief in bird based decision making was not justified based on your experience.
I make a lot of decisions as part of my work, so I've thought about the decision making process. It's clear to me that with 90% of the decisions I make, it doesn't matter what I choose. The only things that are important are 1) I make a choice and 2) I take responsibility for the consequences of my decisions.
Given that, I'm allowed to make most decisions on any basis I want, which allows me to be as playful as I want. Generally, I just go with what feels right without too much introspection. Alternatively, I could do it by your bird method, although maybe you'd have to carry around your field guide all the time. In the spring in the eastern US, there are a lot of warblers migrating north. There are dozens of species and many of them are hard to tell apart. What if you saw a Myrtle Warbler but thought it was a Prairie Warbler and made the wrong decision?
Most decisions are made by such non-rational, not irrational methods. Which is fine.
Did it hold out to your scrutiny? After careful examination of the evidence did it establish the fact that birds can aid in decisions?
If the answer to all the above is "yes", which it probably isn't, then it's rational.
Sorry about that. I dont make decisions using bird omens. I was listening to an intelligence squared debate about whether science refutes God. One pro-speaker, Lawrence Krause (sp?) said that belief in god is irrational.
I don't think that ends up being a refutation, but since then, I've been pondering the idea of a proposition that's necessarily held irrationally. Is there such a thing?
Could belief in bird omens be rational? I think the responders are all saying that it can be rational.
That's leading me to wonder what irrationality is. Is the wording just used to express condemnation?
The research showed that 96% of the time, my decisions were awesome.
Therefore it's rational?
What's the difference?
96% positive results should put it beyond the region of mere coincidence but something else behaves similarly - bias.
If I was unconsciously biased in favor of my method, how does that bear on the rationality of my beliefs?
Yes, and I was trying to make life difficult for you. One tends to attach the labels rational and irrational rather freely, and of course a 'superstitious' belief is by definition... https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/superstition
So when you seek to evoke as superstitious belief and then describe it as...
Quoting Rufoid ... you are creating a contradiction and setting up a fruitless debate about the meanings of words.
I think irrationality is a statement about the coherency of logic but within a context. So it's irrational to bet your life savings on a 1/10000 chance of winning but not if you're going to die tomorrow and you don't have anything better to do with it. It's irrational to use bird omens to make decisions that have nothing to do with birds unless you're doing it for some other reason than trying to make good decisions. It becomes irrational by the standards that have been created through the reason for believing.
Belief in God is slightly more tricky because we're talking about whether or not something exists rather than a choice. Whether belief in God is irrational or not is just one possible framing on that matter. Just as with the bird omen, on the surface, it appears that a belief in God is irrational but we don't know why the belief in God exists. In just one example, one may choose to believe in God because they feel a world without God would lack meaning and that would cause them to be miserable. I would be fine calling that a rational justification for belief in God. It is not sufficient to just know the what, we must know the why.
As I said, it's more important that you be willing to stand behind the decisions you make than it is how you make up your mind. It's your job to figure out how much justification you need for your decisions. In order to do that, you have to have a good understanding of the potential consequences of your actions.
How many decisions do you make every day where it makes a big difference which way you go?
Wouldnt want to get too fruitful. I think it is a question about the meaning of words, though. If you call a behavior irrational, what do you mean?
Is it a fancy way to say, "I dont like that." ?
I think Krause probably asked a philosophical friend for an argument and was told to back down from saying science refutes god and go with "belief in god is irrational." Or maybe not.
Quoting Judaka
See, I wouldn't call that rational. That's belief akin to a drowning person's thrashing. There's no choice, that's all brain stem saying "Live!"
It is rational in that it is rational to do what is in your best interests.
"One pro-speaker, Lawrence Krause (sp?) said that belief in god is irrational.
I don't think that ends up being a refutation, but since then, I've been pondering the idea of a proposition that's necessarily held irrationally. Is there such a thing?"
If I may ask, what was the/his description of God, did he say what that was?
There are actually things in life that are seemingly 'irrational' (probably not the best word) or beyond pure logic, but I will wait for your answer before I share those.
In other words, did he refer to the Christian God?
Is this meant for @Rufoid?
Sorry, yes it was.
Is it? Give us the rationale, pray ...
Quoting T Clark
Quoting T Clark
The choice is immaterial. The OP's question is "can a belief be irrational." Everything else does not matter when we actually read a post and reply to what was asked.
I don’t think we could know whether it is rational or not without understanding your reasons for doing so. What is the scientific research?
I don't think he specified. I could probably link to the debate if you want to see it, but that was just what spurred my question about irrational beliefs. It's not what I was asking.
It's a hypothetical. If I think I have a good reason for following bird omens, aren't my actions rational?
Yes, of course, I was only engaging 'rationality' in the stripped-down sense in which @Rufoid seemed to be using the word, as nothing more than rule-following. But rationality, as we usually understand the word, is more than just following some arbitrary rules; the rules have to be the right rules. Colloquially, rationality and reason are more-or-less interchangeable. Both have a normative component, in addition to structure and generality.
Quoting Echarmion
The scientific method is a distillation of our "rational" (in the usual sense) epistemology, so of course, as with our less formal epistemic practices, the scientific method has a normative justification. It cannot be bootstrapped out of nothing.
Okay gotcha. Just a little taste that would help you to understand that essentially since our existence has not been figured out, there exists irrational beliefs. And that they are ok in many walks of life. We, ourselves, by are very nature are irrational.
If someone says that your belief in the Christian God is irrational then the first thing to do is ask them why. If they say it has anything to do with Jesus, then here's one way to handle that:
1. Jesus was known to be half man and half God.
2. Half truths exist in the world as transcending logic.
3. Consciousness transends logic.
4. Jesus was known to have a human conscious.
5. Therefore it is reasonable to infer the Christian God transcends logic and thus is an irrational human belief.
In the interest of time feel free to ask me to define any of those propsitional statements.
Sure my point is you can tell him that he himself is an irrational being, and therefore he has no argument for your ( or anyone's ) belief in God.
God's nature is supposed to be beyond pure reason. That's part of the concept of a God....
Science has an irrational foundation. Is that what you mean? We're all irrational at base?
Yes broadly speaking or existentially speaking better said, you would be correct.
A cosmological example I gave earlier suggests something other than pure reason that generates this sense of wonder: all events must have a cause (?).
That's also a Kantian synthetic a priori belief system of sorts. But they ( those similar kinds of statements) are necessary for science to test and carry hypothesis forward...
Depends on the context and what you're referring to...for example ethics or science or...?
What are you thinking?
Well first of all thank you for asking me that. I don't think I could answer it in a few paragraphs because it would involve too much philosophy, psychology, phenomenology and existentialism, as it were.
First of all I love a lot of different religious philosophies including Taoism. But the bottom line appealing thing for me is that the Christian God showed himself has a relatable being. And from history, he (the man known as Jesus) overwhelming represented a virtuous concept of Love.
On a pragmatic level, I benefit from revelatory knowledge which helps me in my quality of life.
Sure, good intuition there !
Yes, but not just any condemnation. One can, for example, condemn a decision on moral grounds without judging it irrational. Rationality is an epistemic standard. It's not easy to define what that standard amounts to, except by the method used by dictionary-makers, i.e. by observing how the word is being used "in the wild" and extracting a general pattern (or several) that fits most such usages.
Quoting Rufoid
Yes, acting on good reasons is close in meaning to acting rationally, though I think 'reason' is a somewhat broader category than 'rationality.'
Rationality is a broad term encompassing a whole range of ideas from the laws of thought themselves to the methodology of science.
The cardinal rule is to check if the evidence is adequate or not. Cognitive biases are like faulty instruments on a plane. Either you'll crash or land at the wrong airport. Therefore, cognitive biases are major impediments to rationality.
Here's another phenomenon to consider and/or parse and ponder:
1. Love is a human phenomenon
2. The Christian God (Jesus) represented the ultimate sacrificial Love
3. Love can be an irrational belief
4. Most humans aspire to some form of Love.
If an Atheist wants to posit logic, ask him/her about the definition of Love, and if they aspire to such irrational belief.