I am becoming suspicious that there is either some equivocation in the way Objectivists define rationality, or that the position that humans ought to behave entirely rationally does not always benefit the goal of living. I’ve made some effort to document the premises, arguments, counterarguments, and so on discussed for clarity.
Let me explain: beliefs which are fact-based and grounded in reality are always treated as rational, while those not are irrtational (1). Behaviors which benefit living one’s life are also always treated as rational (2). These statements cannot comport unless one believes that humans are always capable of behaving in a way which best supports their life when they apply a rational mind to the best information they have access to (1, 2, implicit).
This final statement would imply that people are most lively when rational, but at face value, this would defy modern neuroscience. Our conscious mind is quite good at dealing with easily dissected logical problems: for example, parsing how a microchip works or deciding not to stand in front of a bus. On the other hand, unless we are a master at acting, analyzing how to best react in an interpersonal situation will cause us to seem immature, awkward, or insincere (A1).
This can be resolved by saying our rational mind should know to cede its control to the centers of our brain that are not essentially rational to perform in a way that causes the most rational, life-embracing results. However, in the case of ceding our rationality to embrace a false belief that will improve our emotional state and cause us to be more successful, we have implicitly rejected (1). An Objectivist could respond (let’s call this counterargument C1) that (1) need not be rejected because this cannot happen, but it is easy to show easily conceivable situations where this could emerge in the real world (Let’s call this R1, response to counterargument 1).
This leads us to another solution: we can try to escape all of this by accepting a third premise: life is living rationally. The premises would become as follows:
1.) Beliefs which are grounded in rational are always rational to be held.
2.) Behaviors which benefit living are always rational.
(1, 2, implicit) Humans are always capable of behaving in a way which best supports their life when they apply a rational mind to the best information they have access to.
3.) Living is merely being rational, and not-living is merely non-rational.
At this point in time, we can mean one of three things:
A.) Rationality, really, is just doing what gives us the best life, as we objectively quantify living fully.
(This necessitates implicit rejection of (1) via A1; see C1 and R1).
B.) We have decided to see living as being rational.
C.) We are equivocating by equating life and rationality, but later treating them as if they have entirely different meanings. This seems to go on often.
B.) is an interesting if somewhat arbitrary position, but it represents a misleading contortion of the concept of “living”. Because we could easily demonstrate situations in which said ‘thinking rationally’ leads to behaviors that are not conducive to fullest self-benefit (A1), said individuals might be capable of “living fully” in a way which causes them to have unhappy lives, lives with no reproductive success, or so on. Living is reduced to a state of “thinking rationally and acting on those thoughts”, even when said rationality is demonstrably not always the best tool for ends we could quantify as meaningful biological success.
Awaiting your responses,
Ark