By contrast, in the virtue ethics tradition I’m most familiar with, “virtues” are a variety of character traits. Those character traits that tend to help you to succeed at living an excellent human life (or that are themselves ways of living excellently) are virtues; those that interfere with this are vices; any others are just part of life’s rich variety. To consider rationality as a virtue is to consider it as one of the human excellences that individuals can strive to practice characteristically.
As opposed to two extremes of traits, where both ends are bad, and being somewhere in the middle is ideal.
For example, while I was composing this post, I saw a series of tweets from philosopher @AgnesCallard in which she contrasted rationality as a virtue with rationality as a skill.[3]
Ah virtue, those skills which are praiseworthy; oh no! vice! those skills which are banned, condemned and never spoken of!
One problem with trying to restrict yourself to instrumental rationality is that some irrational antipatterns are hard to avoid without epistemic rationality as a back-up. For example, if you are being rational only in order to meet, and only to the extent that you meet certain instrumental goals, you may find that you can efficiently cheat by being less-than-rational in how you evaluate whether those goals have been met.
This sounds odd. If I wish to be rich, then how could I fool myself? Am I not rich or not rich strictly? How could I pretend I have a billion dollars if I do not?
Occasionally you will see the argument that rationality itself is not a component of a flourishing human life but indeed can interfere with human flourishing.
...
The steadfast pursuit of truth and reason comes with no guarantee of leading to a better life unless it turns out that the steadfast pursuit of truth and reason is itself part of a better life. In other words: If rationality is not a virtue, it might turn out to be a poor use of your time.
These are different claims:
rationality in general is bad. (Drink not more poison than is necessary...when you are drunk enough, stop, lest you loose your eyes.)
rationality in general is neutral. (‘If it helps you achieve your goals, by all means. But when the pursuit of money would take more of your time, put aside riches’ pursuit and enjoy.′
or
I like some jam with toast, some jam with pancakes, some pancakes with butter, some toasts with cream cheese—I delight in variety, but hate monotony! Use rationality to change your life, not freeze it, to grow not wither. Preserve the pictures you wish, but do not turn the world to stone.*
*Don’t destroy things to make them understandable. (This seems like an extreme, but do people go there for ‘rationality’?)
)
reason is key to the careful discrimination with which we make those choices and is thereby an ingredient in most if not all virtues.
Then what is reason but decision making? No.
With knowledge you might see more options. With reckoning you might assemble out of parts before you, new possibilities. It may not be true that ‘rationality’ is ‘the ability to make a car, or turn a car into a motorcycle so you can make it out of the desert when your car breaks down’. But… something perhaps similar or related to rationality seems relevant here.
That doesn’t exactly contradict the objection that reason need be carried on only so far as it has practical results.
New possibilities: if you enjoy sudoku, then why not play?
Is there no fun in reason, no delight in solving puzzles or learning new things? If so, then turning away from it if it gets you nothing you desire may seem sensible. But if it is a source of joy—if increased literary analysis does not lessen your enjoyment, but makes things more enjoyable, bring you laughter at new humor in new events and complexity, if reason helps you figure out which films you may better enjoy, so you find them and watch them… then why not?
Because it is ‘rational’? Because someone else has called it so? (Ah, if only my favorite games were not logical, alas!)
Also, in spite of Wilkinson’s objection, people seem to be comfortable making at least some confident judgements about human flourishing. We call things like blindness, deafness, aphasia, paralysis, etc. “disabilities,” “handicaps,” “afflictions,” or what-have-you, because we have a common-sense idea of human flourishing that includes things like sight, hearing, language, locomotion, etc.
Yes. Though an article or two has pointed out Beethoven’s composition as something which contradicts some intuitions one might have around this. I don’t know where to find it now, but one suggested that being hard of hearing, leads to better composition or appreciating music differently (and how the author used this fact to their benefit/enjoyment).
If someone says “I want X.” And you say “do you want the experience machine?” They may still say “No.” (It may be a flaw in theory, but is it a flaw in practice?)
It’s easier to imagine being incorrect about your flourishing than about whether you are “suffering” or “happy”.
It also seems like it could be a harder problem to fix? Recognizing the difficulty not yet resolved seems like a good thing.
Although virtue ethics scholars love to wring their hands worriedly about objections like these, the core of virtue ethics remains mostly easy to swallow. In short, if you believe ① a human life can be a better or worse one to live, ② some significant part of what determines the quality of a human life is the choices that human makes, ③ the better choices are not wholly arbitrary, but have regularities such that choices of-certain-sorts more reliably characterize better lives, and ④ choices of-certain-sorts can become learned habits through deliberate effort, then you implicitly believe in some sort of
virtue ethics.
Skill development
‘develop good habits can improve life’ theory
But if you want to attend one of their workshops and get personally-guided, hands-on direction… you may be out of luck.
Post idea: how to teach practical ‘rationality’/stuff online* (or via a book). Or video.
*There’s zoom, there’s Minecraft**...
**Just because you’re learning rationality doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Or use tools that ‘don’t look serious’ to illustrate things (building the right levels might take a while, but the flexibility to build a very simple computer and show how it works might be useful for some things). Or maybe MTG, not Minecraft, is the way to go.
It is difficult to be textbook-rational in real time, about things whose domains are unclearly bounded, while using squishy hardware. Alas, this describes most of our questions for which rationality would be helpful.
Video games might be...partially bounded I suppose. Some are oriented around figuring out the rules, as well as solving problems (that require learning, trying things out, etc.).
If we were rigorously “scientific” in collecting information for our decisions, it would take us so long to collect the data that the time for action would have passed long before the work had been completed. So how do we know when we have enough?
This seems like the big advantage video games have over static problems—you don’t figure out what to do in time, you die, you start over. There’s more than one solution, but you have to find one quick sometimes.
As opposed to two extremes of traits, where both ends are bad, and being somewhere in the middle is ideal.
Ah virtue, those skills which are praiseworthy; oh no! vice! those skills which are banned, condemned and never spoken of!
This sounds odd. If I wish to be rich, then how could I fool myself? Am I not rich or not rich strictly? How could I pretend I have a billion dollars if I do not?
These are different claims:
rationality in general is bad. (Drink not more poison than is necessary...when you are drunk enough, stop, lest you loose your eyes.)
rationality in general is neutral. (‘If it helps you achieve your goals, by all means. But when the pursuit of money would take more of your time, put aside riches’ pursuit and enjoy.′
or
I like some jam with toast, some jam with pancakes, some pancakes with butter, some toasts with cream cheese—I delight in variety, but hate monotony! Use rationality to change your life, not freeze it, to grow not wither. Preserve the pictures you wish, but do not turn the world to stone.*
*Don’t destroy things to make them understandable. (This seems like an extreme, but do people go there for ‘rationality’?)
)
Then what is reason but decision making? No.
With knowledge you might see more options. With reckoning you might assemble out of parts before you, new possibilities. It may not be true that ‘rationality’ is ‘the ability to make a car, or turn a car into a motorcycle so you can make it out of the desert when your car breaks down’. But… something perhaps similar or related to rationality seems relevant here.
New possibilities: if you enjoy sudoku, then why not play?
Is there no fun in reason, no delight in solving puzzles or learning new things? If so, then turning away from it if it gets you nothing you desire may seem sensible. But if it is a source of joy—if increased literary analysis does not lessen your enjoyment, but makes things more enjoyable, bring you laughter at new humor in new events and complexity, if reason helps you figure out which films you may better enjoy, so you find them and watch them… then why not?
Because it is ‘rational’? Because someone else has called it so? (Ah, if only my favorite games were not logical, alas!)
Yes. Though an article or two has pointed out Beethoven’s composition as something which contradicts some intuitions one might have around this. I don’t know where to find it now, but one suggested that being hard of hearing, leads to better composition or appreciating music differently (and how the author used this fact to their benefit/enjoyment).
If someone says “I want X.” And you say “do you want the experience machine?” They may still say “No.” (It may be a flaw in theory, but is it a flaw in practice?)
It also seems like it could be a harder problem to fix? Recognizing the difficulty not yet resolved seems like a good thing.
virtue ethics.
Skill development
‘develop good habits can improve life’ theory
Post idea: how to teach practical ‘rationality’/stuff online* (or via a book). Or video.
*There’s zoom, there’s Minecraft**...
**Just because you’re learning rationality doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Or use tools that ‘don’t look serious’ to illustrate things (building the right levels might take a while, but the flexibility to build a very simple computer and show how it works might be useful for some things). Or maybe MTG, not Minecraft, is the way to go.
Video games might be...partially bounded I suppose. Some are oriented around figuring out the rules, as well as solving problems (that require learning, trying things out, etc.).
This seems like the big advantage video games have over static problems—you don’t figure out what to do in time, you die, you start over. There’s more than one solution, but you have to find one quick sometimes.