Can philosophy integrate the irrational as mathematics can?

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:

The interscetion is a dynamic one. It is historical. There is motion in it.

Especially for you, Magnus, I have drawn the arrows, indicating the movement, in the diagram. See:

R_I.jpg

Who denies the history and the movement of the world and therefore also within the logic, who doesn’t want to perceive that not always everything can be assigned only as either rational or as irrational, that one is obviously not of this world.

It is a fact that about many things it cannot be said exactly whether they are rational or irrational despite the fact that these things belong to something that can be assigned to either the rational or the irrational. Many things can only be evaluated as either rational or irrational in retrospect. You have brought an example yourself: “The set of all hunger feelings”. The term “hunger feelings” means two things: hunger and feelings. What are feelings? Something rational or irrational? And: Which feelings? 100%?

Who decides what is rational and what is irrational? This “who” are humans, and humans are only rational to a certain extent, irrational to another (far greater) extent. How this is distributed is not known exactly.

Homo sapiens is rational according to those people who have decided that homo sapiens is rational (=> sapiens). The statements of those who have decided that homo sapiens is rational already show that not everything about this species is rational. And not all individuals of this species are rational in equal shares.

Is your stomach rational?
Yes? To what percentage?
No? To what percentage?

And hunger?

[tab]Do you decide on this alone?[/tab]

@ Obsvr524

Unfortunately, all set diagrams, as well as the Venn diagram, are static, i.e. they always assume an actual state. In reality, however, everything is in motion, everything is history.

My diagram is a dynamic diagram that takes history into account.

Venn is not a god for me.

Ok that explains a lot. Apparently you do not believe in objective reality. You seem to believe that reality is man-made.

And that makes you one of those “irrationals” that you would like to see “integrated”. :laughing:

We can still explain the irrational in terms of objectivity.

What are your brief thoughts on this obsrvr524?

What kind of nonsense is that?

That is your nonsensical prejudice - largely consisting of irrationality. :laughing:

I see what becomes, what is and what will become. That has to do with reality. Reality and history (development) belong together. There is nothing irrational about such a statement.

I never said that reality is made by humans, I said that humans decide (in case of doubt) what is known and what is unknown, what is rational and what is irrational; but that humans decide does not mean that humans make all the reality. One is a matter of determination of knowledge, the other is reality. This human behavior is part of the reality, of the history. History and reality belong together - that’s what I said. This does not make me someone who denies reality. On the contrary! You don’t want to know anything about history and therefore about reality.

R_I.jpg
I see what has become through humans. This, my insight, has nothing to do with irrationality, except in the sense that I take irrationality into account in everything rational, because I do not ignore irrationality, because it is so strong. I have said that several times. But you probably don’t want to or can’t understand that. The irrational is more in you than you think. You should allow it. That would be healthier for you.

You are not the first who constantly sanctifies the rational and thereby demonizes the irrational and therefore does not notice how irrational that is.

You are like a little boy who has lost his toy, “rationality”, and is now crying. Crying has a rational and an irrational component. But how exactly that is distributed, no one knows. One can only assume estimates and probabilities. The crying belongs to the reality, however, it is not simply rational or simply irrational, but it is both.

…and perhaps a lack of information makes it more difficult to explain things rationally. I understand the idea behind what you are saying here…

We can explain smaller things in a more rational sense because it is easier to apply logic to small things.

When things get immense as they are related to human beings and separately the universe, however…,
…when can not easily apply the full array of logic necessary to arrive at logical conclusions when trying to view the full picture.

Estimates and probabilities are not necessarily irrational, however.

Objectivity refers to the idea that everything is what it is - NOT necessarily what anyone thinks it is. Both Magnus and I have been trying to explain that to Great Again by saying that a process (at any one time) is either rational or not. Nothing can be both rational and also irrational. His response has been that perhaps we mislabeled it, misunderstood it, or just don’t know. He offered a Venn diagram showing a region that is both rational and also irrational.

The objective point of view is that how we label it is irrelevant to what it actually is. But he hasn’t accepted that answer. So when he said that a Venn diagram is static while reality is always changing he revealed that he believes that the diagram that he stated to be the real case concerning rational vs irrational is itself static and so not the changing objective reality of the subject. He is saying that the diagram is both true and not true at the same time and dependent on our accuracy and knowledge.

All of that implies that he is not accepting objective reality - else how we label things would be irrelevant. When someone doesn’t accept objective reality they are claiming man-made reality.

It has nothing to do with prejudice at all. You are claiming that some things are what they are and also what they are not at the same time because we might not know what they are. The point is that what we know is irrelevant to what they are - that is objective reality and what your diagram was supposed to be representing - although obviously in error.

And now your response sounds exactly like this -

I understand. The problem comes when people don’t acknowledge that we can never truly comprehend things as they are(re: the idea that everything is what it is). We have to exercise some faith when mixing realities(internal vs external). Things are always rational and irrational in the brain - you don’t get to choose a brain state and if the brain produces the mind then the focus might be the only thing that feels rational. The Venn diagram is a very simplified version of this. I don’t think it is mandatory that Great Again accepts any answer. I think the diagram can not be in a state of true and false - this is something else. Lastly - how we label things are relevant just as external and internal realities are always changing. Nothing changes fast enough for an accepted objective reality not to be useful for a long period of time. Perhaps this explains why good metaphysics is always able to keep up.

Yes we try to describe actual reality as well as we can (by defining our words - which GA doesn’t seem to want to do). And then we apply the rule of logic - remain always consistent in our language - while observing actual reality more in order to discover if our description of reality is accurate. If we don’t do that we can never know anything at all. We can’t even estimate reality with any confidence.

AG is starting to sound like the Schrodinger’s cat quantum physicist who says that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time because we do not know and once we discover if it is alive - reality becomes whatever we discover. That is subjectivism (“reality is whatever we believe”), not objectivism (“reality is independent of what we believe”).

Let’s do what those who found problems with what the quantum magi did and add super-determinism on top(keep playing the game of matryoshka). To know anything at all, it helps to apply justified-true-belief(hence the need for faith). I just don’t want to see you boys get lost in another rabbit hole if not by choice.

I added to my last post: Perhaps this explains why good metaphysics is always able to keep up. A good metaphysics is still able to account for the irrational.

I am about to decide that AG simply has his bubble of belief and challenging that makes him uncomfortable so I should leave it alone.

:laughing: - a true James fan.

Nobody said that estimates and probabilities were irrational.

“Irrational” simply means “not rational”. Whatever the word “rational” means, the word “irrational” means the opposite of it. So it’s not possible for something – whatever that something is – to be both rational and irrational because that would mean that thing is both rational and not rational. That’s a logical contradiction: P and not-P. So whoever says “Things can be both rational and irrational” is either 1) contradicting themselves, or 2) they are defining words in a different way. And if they are defining words in a different way, the problem can be easily resolved by them defining their words so that other people can know what they are talking about.

It doesn’t help that the word “rational” has different menaings when applied to different types of things e.g. numbers are rational in one way, decisions are rational in another way, people are rational in yet another way and so on. (Though, it goes without saying that, in each case, a thing is either rational or not. It cannot be both.) So it would be really helpful to know what kind of rationality we’re talking about here. And it would also be useful to know what’s the connection between the rationality of numbers (“mathematicians integrating irrational numbers”) and the rationality of people (“societies integrating irrational people”).

That’s a somewhat dangerous thing to say. It really looks like (and I really only hope it only looks like) you’re saying that it’s a bad thing to always make good decisions and that it’s a good thing to mix the two e.g. by making good decisions 80% of the time and bad decisions 20% of the time. It’s one thing to say people are imperfect, it’s another to say people should be imperfect.

Clearly, you have understood nothing at all.

It has exclusively to do with prejudice.

Your statement only confirms my previous assumption. Now the little boy is offended.

It is the bubble of pseudo-rationality that you are in. You really believe that all you have to do is keep the irrational far enough away from the rational and then you have your “solution”. Yes, the solution you are seeing right now: The irrational dominates you. That is your “solution”.

Again: You are not the first to constantly sanctify the rational and thus demonize the irrational and therefore not realize how irrational that is.

And again: You have understood absolutely nothing. You show that more and more clearly.

You falsely believe, by saying to “adhere to rationality”, that understanding is not a problem for you. In reality, this is exactly your biggest problem, as you show here more and more clearly. You are stuck in a trap, in the bubble of pseudo-rationality.

You run away from reality, always back into your bubble.

At the same time, you once said a really important sentence in a thread, but you yourself satirically dismissed it in this thread, as if you wanted to draw a caricature of yourself. I have taken this sentence to one of the occasions to open this thread. I did not know at that time how inflexible you are in thinking.

I wonder why you are even posting in this thread, because you obviously don’t like the topic of this thread.

I have stated what this thread is about. You want to make it your thread. Then go ahead and make a thread of your own. Good luck with that.