Are People Rational?

Discussion of articles that appear in the magazine.

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bluepants77
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Re: Are People Rational?

Post by bluepants77 »

Ongley seems to me to make the point that Keynes would have agreed with, and miss the mark where he disagrees with Keynes. As Ongley points out, Keynes held that Russell was well aware of the irrationality of human behaviour, but that he (Russell) simultaneously believed that we can remedy human failings by aspiring to be more rational. Ongley draws on plenty of examples where Russell shows the inanity of human belief and behaviour - but that was Keynes' point. Everyone knows Russell was deeply pessimistic about his fellow humans' ability to think clearly about anything. What Ongley seems to skate over is that Russell believed strongly that we could do better - and that if we didn't, we'd die out as a species pretty quickly. He makes the argument quite forcefully in one of the articles that Ongley cites: "Can men be rational". In that paper Russell answers with a resounding "yes". He sees the rise of evidence based science (and his own philosophical endeavours) as proof that it is possible. He *also* acknowledges that many disagree with him, in particular the American Pragmatists (James and Dewey being the chief culprits) who Russell never quite managed to fathom. Keynes had much more in common with Pragmatism than with the mathematical and logical certainties beloved of so many logically minded philosophers and economists, and so for him Russell's argument in "Can men be rational" must have seemed rather quixotic. Keynes might also have been alive to some of the typically Russellian tensions that run through "Can men be rational" - not the least being that Russell is excruciatingly aware that academics, like everyone else, are in thrall to their prejudices, which shape their academic work. This is an observation that in other places he extends to himself, allowing the possibility that his own belief in the possibility of improving people's rational capacities is a result of his oft-declared love of order and clarity. In many respects Russell was more like Dewey than he realised, and perhaps only his deep prejudices prevented him from accepting a more pragmatic outlook - and led to the tension that Keynes remarked upon.
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