All human action is necessarily rational. Yes or No

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Guilt is a negative emotion, reducing satisfaction. Attempting to assuage guilt therefore increases satisfaction. An altruistic person presumably enjoys helping others. Therefore, acting on altruistic impulses increases satisfaction. Need I go on?

All values are subjective, as with individual preferences.

People act based on those preferences, regardless of why people have them. Whether they are emotional, 'logical' or simply reflexes/instincts.

The definition provided has nothing to do with health, personal well-being or the well-being of others.

People act to achieve satisfaction based on personal (subjective) preferences.

If a person eats something 'unhealthy' it is because that person places more value on that item than eating 'healthier' alternatives. If a person chooses to eat healthy, then that person places higher value on being healthy or eating healthy food.

Different individuals have different preferences, but their actions are still, by definition, rational.

"'Rational' is defined as doing what one expects will achieve the highest utility"

Keyword is expects.

Information being imperfect is completely outside of the definition of rational.

Human action becomes irrational when the ability to reason is impaired, such as when under the influence of drugs, alcohol or hormonal imbalance. Schizophrenia often carries its own unique forms of irrationality -- Paranoid Schizophrenia, for example.

That essentially goes back to the 'imperfect information'.

Even impaired persons have preferences and act on them.

That's a mighty slippery scale of "rationality" you have there.

Moving goalposts your profession, or just a hobby?

I've just had about six good pints of cider now. You look very sexy to me. Can I kiss you? I can't see too well...

The goalposts were clearly positioned at the start of this thread. Perhaps they were moved for the purposes of this thread, but over its course they've remained unmoving.

Does decreasing dissatisfaction necessarily increase satisfaction? I think of satisfaction as the gratification of an urge or impulse. That is, you do something so that you no longer feel that impulse.

All human action rational? Hah! by any definition.

At times I wonder rather is any?

True. I misunderstood the question.

However, this has the appearance of moving the goalposts, in the end. If you define "rational" as what one expects, at the moment of deciding, to achieve highest utility (this is not exactly your definition, but it is clearer, though perhaps rather on the one side than the other), the result is that a) it is entirely and completely obvious (or at least, it would be, but for what Vigilans said) b) we reach a point where "rationality" is completely under the empire of impulses, which are normally seen as irrational. It begins to be rather sterile. Of course, a definition of rationality in objective terms would yield the opposite result: it is completely obvious that humans don't always choose the option that will actually yield highest utility, because they don't.

According to David Hume, reason is subservient to passion.

-Treatise on Human Understanding - p 295

ruveyn

That is a very useless reference, since you didn't say which edition you used.

Sorry about that.

"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions."[3] (B.2.3.3). This is the way scholars refer to works in a reference edition. Book 2, Section 3 Paragraph 3. The reasoning leading up to the above conclusion is the subject of Book 2 of the Treatise.

ruveyn

What would be a 'rational' act as opposed to an 'emotional' one? I don't think it's all that helpful - or clear - a distinction, but I'm curious.

And I think this sort of thing, trying to redefine a word into a particular context, is iffy - one can't escape the associations the word already has. One could, with perhaps a little twist, replace 'rational' with 'emotional' here, and equally show 'all human action is necessarily emotional'.

your definition of rationality, while valid is far fromt he only one as well.