All human action is necessarily rational. Yes or No

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Where 'rational' is defined as doing what one expects will achieve the highest utility;

where,

'utility' is defined as satisfaction.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

not really though,

you have people that full well know their actions are destructive towards themselves and/or others, intellectually that is, yet still persit to do them.
how would one wheigh long vs short term satisfaction in such a situation?

why is utility defined as satisfaction? (not disagreeing as such but utility is in itself a very complex concept,)

It's not about whether it is 'destructive' or not. But rather that person believes will give him satisfaction.

Even a serial killer is rational under the above definition. He kills because it provides him satisfaction. This, of course, is all based upon his preferences.

About the definition of 'utility', that's just how it's defined. Why economists didn't just use the word 'satisfaction' instead of utility is beyond me.

In those definitions, yes. I might disagree with how you've set up and defined the question, and so on. But in this case, I think so, yes.

One feels a desire to do something, so one takes an action to satisfy that desire.

The action itself might not actually satisfy the desire, but if the person believes it will, to them it would still be rational.

Where there are opposing desires - one can have a desire, but also a desire not to satisfy the first desire - one could say that desire with the stronger satisfaction wins out.

But again, this is working within your set-up. I disagree with the set-up, not least because 'rational' becomes so broad as to be useless. Not unlike saying every action is selfish, as it comes from something we want to do.

Last edited by Hopper on 25 Sep 2012, 4:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, because information is imperfect, and in any case it couldn't be analysed fully.

my point is that a word such as rational or utility have widely varying defintiions in different fields, utility doesnt defacto mean satisfaction, it might as well mean the greatest good for the greatest number, you decided that in this context it was satisfaction, i am asking why, not because i inherently disagree that utility can be satisfaction, but i need the context for there to actually be anything to discuss.

a serial killer might be satisfied short term by killing yet long term by not, how does one decide or judge between them?

so sure your system as strictly set up above might be imnternally consistent but if it is to be used for anything at all then it needs to deal with the world as is and there i think it is far too simplistic, which is why the context would be needed for an actual discusiion to take place.

Human actions are not always rational. In fact, most human action is habitual which means that we run on auto pilot a great deal and rarely think things through to the bottom.

ruveyn

if all human anger was rational, We wouldn't have figures like Hitler, Mussolini, Mosley, Nick Griffin, Slobodan Milosevic and other hatemongers.

I think it was Socrates who wrote about human rationality being limited by the human body itself. It compels us to do stupid things, like sexual activity up to and including the point of contracting disease, or farting at innopportune moments.

Don't you mean Verwoerd? Or Malan?

Yep, see my edit.

In hindsight he probably wasnt the worst one

The problem here is that using a "broad" definition of rationality, self-interest, utility, satisfaction etc. might make it impossible to make any empirical predictions based on rationality. If both serial killers and those who pursue the greatest good for the greatest number (Error: Maximization Problem) are rational, then just about all actions can considered to be rational.

This is the problem of Praxeology in the Austrian School of Economics, for instance...

It is the classical "Fruit versus Light" discussion... Do we want useful theories and models or do we want to accurately describe human nature?

No, because satisfaction is not an objective standard.

I contemplate eating a doughnut. I like doughnuts and I know that eating one will give me pleasure and a sense of satiety. But I also know that the fat and sugar in the doughnut will contribute to negative health consequences. So either way, I am compromising one satisfaction (full stomach; good health) for another. But here, at least there is a choice of satisfactions. So perhaps that is still rational, regardless of the compromise.

From that perspective, than almost any concious decision that we make can have motive ascribed to it.

But there are actions that are unconcious. A person in a state of automatism, for example, is the most dramatic aspect.

But the reality is that we are engaged in unconcious decision making all the time. In many cases, our emotional responses to options are actually the product of unconscious evaluation of those options, and then we play "catch up" with our conscious mind--exercising rationalization to understand the decision that our unconscious mind has already made, and communicated to us through "feelings."

Even here, though, there remains the possibility that the unconscious decision making is still an exercise in rationalism. Certainly, from your definition, there is some research that suggests that unconscious decision making leads to better choice satisfaction than deliberation.

But finally, there are actions that are not mediated by the brain at all. Most of these fall under the rubric of "reflexes."

When you touch something hot, for example, the withdrawal response is mediated by interneurons that link sensory neruons directly with motor neurons--and you pull back your hand before you are even aware that you were in danger of burning yourself. The responses can be enormously complex--if you step on something sharp, for example, not only will your body pull up on that foot, it will also relax the extensor muscle that opposes the withdrawal moton so that it is not inhibited, and it will coordinate a balance response to that the opposing foot and leg are prepared to resume the load. And it all happens automatically before the brain has had a chance to process the stimulus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflex_arc

Are you an Austrian School economist?

It is like talking to a homeopath.
my lord this must be why I feel like I am playing chess with a pigeon.

Yes. At least, some significant part of their brain must view the action as maximizing satisfaction.

On the other hand, if one defines being rational as the similar but nonetheless different concept of choosing actions that will actually maximize satisfaction, no Human is fully rational and very few are highly so.

Last edited by Tiranasta on 25 Sep 2012, 6:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A better way of putting it is that humans are able to rationalize any situation or action no matter how irrational it may be, and often choose this over truth

There answer is NO


In fact, why is this question even asked? People's actions are frequently driven by transient impulses and emotive forces. People often do things that are NOT "rational" as you've defined it. Sometimes it is done out of guilty. Sometimes it is done because they have altruistic(empathic) impulses, sometimes it is something that motivates them that they aren't entirely aware of. And sometimes, they realize that doing what they expect to achieve the highest satisfaction comes with consequences so dire that they'd rather avoid such a fate even if it means forgoing satisfaction.