Can philosophy integrate the irrational as mathematics can?

I think all of that would have made a superior OP for this thread. :wink:

And I have realized something concerning the maths analogy -

In mathematics there is a number line that orders all rational numbers. And the irrational numbers, even though they don’t actually fit onto that line, each come very close to a small range of rational numbers. The irrationals could be placed on a line just above the rationals and in order.

So with that I thought the act of organizing all rational and irrational thought would end up with a similar “integrated” understanding of all thought - rational AND irrational - just order them.

Obviously that wouldn’t be easy but then I remembered James’ “Resolution Debating” in which a type of tree of knowledge grows through experience, categorizing, and documenting the debates - to eventually order all thought and also which person accepts which thoughts (and for heavens sake don’t tell the Chinese #-o ).

That resolution debating requires 3 people - a logic monitor and two challengers. The monitor must be a very strict rationalist with a keen eye for logic compliance. I tried an experiment with Magnus to see if we could somehow mutually monitor and that certainly resolved what it was that was causing the disagreement but because of it being what it was - further debate became problematic. It turned out that we had different definitions for the symbol “…”. As usual the problem was that same - “get your words straight” issue. And I think those kinds of things become branches of the tree where anyone who agrees with one definition takes off with others who also agree on that definition. Every resolved dispute leads to either a willing correction or another branch of thought and associated persons.

Resolution debating is proposed as a way to discover exactly what the differences are between people’s beliefs and allow them to identify their own group. A “tree of knowledge” grows as well as a “tree of personalities”.

I now think that enacting that resolution debating process takes care of this proposed concern of integrating because it orders literally all belief - rational or not.

But still there is that issue of forming the “hand” although now it seems it only requires a designated logic monitor and willing debaters. So merely 3 people of specific nature and you have it accomplished.

And now I remember that it was proposed as an open-for-continued scrutiny in his Constitution of Rational Harmony - Restoring Sanity. That makes up for an imperfect monitor.

After you recommended the Mithus book to me, I started reading also some posts about “Rational Harmony”. In one I read (I don’t remember the exact wording) that according to James the substructure (the fundamental constitution) must be exactly right to avoid even the slightest error (as in all governments) corruption (he called it “cancer”), and that James’ efforts to create such a constitution is said to have resulted in a “Constitution of Rational Harmony”.

People understand “harmony” as something that is emotional at first. And in fact: Harmony has a lot to do with emotions, with feelings, feelings are considered irrational. Also James would probably not deny this, but probably also say that with his concept of “rational harmony” harmony is also to be produced by rationality, and this in turn can be understood as an attempt to get something irrational rationally under control - just as I already said in my opening post.

What I am claiming now, and what I also have said in my opening post, is the fact that the irrational goes beyond, under and next to the rational, almost, but not really completely, surrounding it. For: if the irrational would completely surround the rational, then the rational would be a subset of the irrational (as if the rational and irrational numbers were a subset of the irrational numbers). But it is not like that.


And you respectively James try to make the rational (logical) as big as possible, that the irrational (alogical) remains as small as possible. This experiment has been first attempted on a huge scale by none other than Hegel.

Is it irrational to feel hungry?

Hunger is not necessarily a purely irrational matter, but even less is hunger a purely rational matter. The irrational part of hunger is quite high. You will notice that at the latest when you will have been hungry for a very long time.

The point here is also not to say that something is either exclusively rational or exclusively irrational; that’s often not how it is, as my illustration also shows.


If we really want to understand and describe the rational and the irrational and their relations, then we must take into account that there is an intersection between the two (cf. figure).

So when I say that “people understand ‘harmony’ as something that is emotional at first” and that “feelings are considered irrational”, then I am referring to what the people consider feelings are, and they are not always but also not seldom right.

I think you might be trying to place the irrationals onto the rational number line - making the same mistake of mathematicians long ago.

“you respectively James”?

I haven’t seen when James ever spoke of irrationals. He was apparently doing exactly what he said to do in his signature -
“Clarify, verify, instill, and reinforce the perception of hope and threat toward anentropic harmony

That is not trying to “make the rational as big as possible”. It is seeking a perfect balance of harmony (“anentropy”) - not expanding - not shrinking - but in perfect balance with any surrounding “irrationality”. He did somewhere speak of a natural and rational limit to growth to achieve that anentropic state. And he explained how subatomic particles and animals do exactly that - grow or shrink just enough to maintain anentropy.

And I don’t think he thought of emotions as irrational. He explains why they arise and why they are felt. I think he was actually saying that it is due to a rational response to an environment too complex to handle but one that leads to a “competition of priorities”. And it is that competition and struggle that leads to imbalanced irrational behavior (my words not his).

And it seems irrational to say that something is both rational and irrational - overlapping in your chart. That is how the rational gets lost. A behavior might be rational for one purpose but irrational for another purpose. The purpose has to be included in the assessment of rationality. If the action meets the purpose it is rational - if it doesn’t - it is irrational. So ignoring specific purpose any behavior could be called irrational or rational.

So we have a line of behaviors that meet their specified purpose and a different line of behaviors that do not meet their specified purpose. They don’t mix - the irrationals do not fit anywhere on the rational number line.

I think that maybe what you are really trying to get at is the incorporation of irrational behaviors into a rational society.

That is done by giving otherwise uncivil behavior a civil purpose (causing it to be rational). All societies attempt that to some degree (more in the West than the East). If someone is particularly violent yet reasonably obedient - you place him on the battlefield - or relocate him into the camp of your enemy (what O’Biden is currently doing with the illegal immigrants).

O’Biden says that his “plan is working” (or is rational) - because his plan is the desolation of the US. And the Us as a whole is realizing (despite media) that putting him in charge was highly irrational to suit their intention. The MSM merely suckered them into hating Mr Trump such that they were willing to do anything to get rid of him - such as commit voter fraud. They were tricked into being rational for the US’s enemies while irrational to themselves.

If everyone is given a rational purpose (MIJOT :smiley: ) and taught how to manage it - all “irrational people” will be behaving rationally.

I think a good example of incorporating the irrational is in economics - trick irrational consuming of products, drugs, pharmaceuticals, technology, and media (such as rambling on discussion boards and social media) in order to create stable wealth, power, and dominance for the “upper class”.

Political and religious advocates intentionally create irrationality for that purpose. But since it serves their purpose, as far as they are concerned, it is not irrational behavior any more than a fire burning a log in the fireplace would be irrational behavior of the fire.

To globalists, promoting criminality in the US is rational behavior because it serves their purpose - George Soros, O’Biden, Zuckerburg, de Blasio…

Interesting timing - :laughing:

Tucker Carlson discusses corruption and irrationality being promoted in the US -
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG37azMVwl4[/youtube]

The promotion by anti-American globalists of corruption and irrationality in the US is a “rational” tactic as far as they are concerned. Forcing the peasants to obey irrational dictates is rational training to get them to obey without thought or objection.

Well, in most cases, the word “rational” and the word “irrational” are defined as mutually exclusive. In other words, if something is rational then it is necessarily not irrational and vice versa. Take mathematics as an example. Are there numbers that are both rational and irrational? There aren’t, right? That’s why I asked for a definition. If you’re not using words the way they are normally used, the need to define them, and do so clearly, is significantly greater.

That seems to be merely saying that there are feelings that are rational and feelings that are irrational. I agree with that. Not every feeling of hunger is rational. Sometimes, you really should ignore hunger and let it die (instead of acting upon it.) That would solve the problem of obesity in the modern day world (but it seems like noone cares about that.)

A set of feelings (such as the set of all feelings of hunger) is not a type of thing that can either be rational or irrational. Instead, it’s a type of thing that can consist of exclusively rational things, exclusively irrational things or a mix of rational and irrational things. Individual feelings, on the other hand, are either rational or irrational – they cannot be both rational and irrational.

@ Magnus Anderson.

We are in disagreement. But that is not a bad thing.

@ Obsvr524 + Magnus Anderson.

In my last post, I have (1.) not spoken of rational and irrational numbers, but of the rational and irrational in general, in reality, (2.) already pointed out several times that we have to separate the mathematical and thus the theoretical realm on the one hand and the practical or real realm on the other hand (we also do not say that mathematics and biology are the same thing), (3.) left the intersection of the rational and the irrational unnamed for very certain cases.

Not all poems are directly accessible to rationality, some not at all. But there are ways of hermeneutics, of understanding, which can lead to them becoming rationally accessible. But there can remain an realm that can not yet be assigned to the realm of the irrational and also not yet to the realm of the rational. This assignment is made by the rational, and sometimes it succeeds in taking something away from the realm of the irrational, i.e. in enlarging the realm of the rational (in other words: something was understood), but sometimes it does not succeed. And this realm, which can be assigned not yet to the irrational and not yet to the rational realm, that is the intersection of the rational and the irrational.

What about the situations?

Someone killed his wife out of hunger or out the “set of all hunger feelings”.

  • Rational?
  • Irrational?
  • Not (yet) decidable?

The whole world is not only rational, the wohole world is irrational and rational and some or many things can not (yet) put in one of the two realms, because it is not (yet) decidable, where to put it. Some may be rational, some not, but then - later - they are just the other way around. You have to wait. The capability of waiting has gone lost. What you can’t decide at the moment, decide it later. The intersection is a good thing for those who can (still) wait.

What is harmony?

  • Rational?
  • Irrational?
  • Not (yet) decidable?

What is “rational harmony” for Trump?

  • Rational?
  • Irrational?
  • Not (yet) decidable?

What is “rational harmony” for Biden?

  • Rational?
  • Irrational?
  • Not (yet) decidable?

What is “rational harmony” for a 10 years old child?

  • Rational?
  • Irrational?
  • Not (yet) decidable?

God?

  • Rational?
  • Irrational?
  • Not (yet) decidable?

The not (yet) decidable belongs to the intersection.

We do not know who possesses the absolute truth - in former times this possession was reserved to God. And today? To the mass media! To the “man” (Heidegger), i.e. to the inauthenticity!

Instinct, intuition, feeling, love and much more - all either rational or irrational?

No inability of people in the assignment to the rational and irrational?

Is this inability of assignment rational or irrational?

We are all Gods?

Your diagram and your words suggest that there are things thar are both rational and irrational. In other words, the intersection represents things that are “both rational and irrational”. “Not decidable”, however, represents things that “might be rational or might be irrational”. When you can’t decide whether something is X or Y, that does not mean that that thing is both X and Y.

My diagram and words suggest that there are things that are both rational and irrational in the sense that they cannot yet be assigned otherwise, but must be one of the two. I.e.: They are not otherwise assignable (as I have said several times). They belong to the (set of) reality, like the rational and the irrational, and they will also - sooner or later - find their place exactly in one of the two, but cannot do it now.

The intersection is something like a transit camp, because everything is in motion, is historical, is dynamic, because something always comes in and comes out. So the intersection must remain.

No misinterpreted rationality?
No misinterpreted irrationality?

What about the recognized (objectum)?
What about the to-be-recognized (objiciendum)?
What about the (still) unrecognized (transobjective)?
What about the unrecognizable (transintelligible)?

No transcendence?
No transcendentality (in the sense of Kant’s transcendental philosophy)?
No being-in (in the sense of Heidegger’s existential philosophy)?
No being-in-the-world (in the sense of Heidegger’s existential philosophy)?

The available 4 categories are -

  • Rational
  • Not Rational
  • Not Applicable
  • Unknown

A Venn diagram would have no overlapping or intersectionality or union.

I don’t think you can have “mistakenly labeled” as a legitimate category.

And again without a specified purpose, all processes are “Unknown”.
All items (non-processes) are “Not Applicable”.
All processes that meet the specified goal are “Rational”.
All processes that do not meet the specified goal are “Irrational”.

Any given decision is either rational or irrational and it is so regardless of what people think. Joe might think that a decision is rational, Mark might think that it is irrational and Susan might be uncertain; the decision itself, however, is either rational or irrational. If it happens to be rational then Joe is right, Mark is wrong and Susan is neither right nor wrong (since she has no opinion.) Even if everyone is uncertain, the decision is still either rational or irrational. Let’s not confuse what something is with what people think something is. It’s not possible for a decision to be both rational and irrational just like it’s not possible for it to be neither rational nor irrational – it’s simply a logical consequence of the way these words are defined. That said, you are either wrong or you are simply defining words in a different way than I – and most other people I know – do. And that’s why I asked you to provide clear definitions (:

I am not sure but I take it that you’re asking the following question:

Do you believe that there is not even one decision that was made at some point in the past for which there was/is at least one person in the world who mistakenly classified it as either rational or irrational e.g. a rational decision that was mistakenly believed to be irrational?

My answer to that question is: no, I don’t believe that.

“Yes” to the first three but “I don’t know” to the fourth because I don’t really understand what you mean by “unrecognizable”. I am divided between “Yes” and “No”.

If I didn’t know better I’d be tempted to swear that post was written by James. :laughing: