Well, yes. Rationality, the way I think of it, isn’t about “winning” or “truth-seeking”.
If you think of a cybernetic diagram of an organism—like this:
Sensory input → Computations → Motor output
...then I think “rationality” needs to be confined to the middle unit. It is a computational process. You might need some motor output in order to be able to detect it—but that isn’t part of rationality itself.
Truth-seeking is a goal. It is one goal among the many possible that it is possible to rationally pursue. Rational agents often adopt truth-seeking as a proximate goal—whatever they want to do—but embracing false beliefs is sometimes rational too—it depends on what your goal is.
For me, rationality has a lot to do with the valid use of inductive and deductive reasoning in pursuit of a goal.
I think “probability updates under Bayes’ rule” is very clever and highly accurate, and it gets to just what you’re talking about. Also, since this thread is trending towards everyone defining (or at least characterizing) rationality for themselves, here goes: rationality is what happens when evidence is recognized by a consciousness, subjected to ordered thought, and used to form or modify beliefs.
That’s as close as I can get to “correct” for myself with a few minutes of thought and natural language. It seems to fit with the notion of rationality as a computational process.
Re: Are there any others?
Well, yes. Rationality, the way I think of it, isn’t about “winning” or “truth-seeking”.
If you think of a cybernetic diagram of an organism—like this:
Sensory input → Computations → Motor output
...then I think “rationality” needs to be confined to the middle unit. It is a computational process. You might need some motor output in order to be able to detect it—but that isn’t part of rationality itself.
Truth-seeking is a goal. It is one goal among the many possible that it is possible to rationally pursue. Rational agents often adopt truth-seeking as a proximate goal—whatever they want to do—but embracing false beliefs is sometimes rational too—it depends on what your goal is.
For me, rationality has a lot to do with the valid use of inductive and deductive reasoning in pursuit of a goal.
I think “probability updates under Bayes’ rule” is very clever and highly accurate, and it gets to just what you’re talking about. Also, since this thread is trending towards everyone defining (or at least characterizing) rationality for themselves, here goes: rationality is what happens when evidence is recognized by a consciousness, subjected to ordered thought, and used to form or modify beliefs.
That’s as close as I can get to “correct” for myself with a few minutes of thought and natural language. It seems to fit with the notion of rationality as a computational process.