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Dear Yuyutsu,

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You wrote :

« If an action or an interest is rational, this implies that it is not basic or primary, that you should dig deeper … You can always dig further until eventually you arrive at an irrational desire »

I must confess that I do not see why that should be so, Yuyutsu.

As I indicated in my previous post I understand why certain desires may and probably should be considered unreasonable, particularly where young children are concerned, but not why they should be considered irrational.

Perhaps you could elaborate a little further.

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Dear Banjo,

The difference between 'rational' and 'reasonable' seems very subtle: what is the difference between a 'rationale' and a 'reason'?
perhaps one may imply more than the other that the thought is more conscious, but which one it is? Or perhaps one more strongly suggests the lack of contradiction, but which one it is?

Whichever words we use, the bottom line is that one has a desire 'D' which cannot be derived rationally or by way of reason, plus a reason/rationale 'R' which makes them believe that performing an action 'A' is likely to forward desire 'D'.

Desires can have no reason other than deeper desires. If we dig deep enough, we should arrive at desire(s) that have no rationale or reason, such as perhaps the desire to live. As we dig, it's also quite common to detect desires that are grounded on false logic and/or incorrect or obsolete assumptions.

Dear George,

Assumptions cannot drive us to do anything, only desires. Assumptions could be part of a rationale/reason for an action, but just that something is so, has no power to do anything on its own.

Dear Yuyutsu,

You are right, assumptions do not drive us to do anything but I was referring not to actions but to world views based on one’s basic assumptions about the world outside and inside of us (beliefs e.g. into the self-explanatory power of science, or in God however one understands Him, etc).

You are also right, if I understand you properly, that these basic assumptions (and the world view built on them) can only influence how we evaluate our desires before acting on them in a particular situation.

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Dear Yuyutsu,

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You wrote :

« If we dig deep enough, we should arrive at desire(s) that have no rationale or reason, such as perhaps the desire to live »

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I’m afraid I do not share your opinion on that, Yuyutsu. I agree with Jacques Monod that “life is a spontaneous, evolutive, sensitive and reproductive process …” in which we all participate unwillingly.

The “natural” reproductive process of life keeps rolling on without interruption, despite all the wars and destruction we inflict on it from time to time. It could even be said that life is in perpetual motion.

Is it, as you seem to suggest, a purely irrational process ? I don’t think so.
I think it is a perfectly rational process of which biologists have probably already unraveled most, if not all, of the secrets, except perhaps, for the one you mentioned: what is it that provokes the “desire to live”. Is the desire to live purely irrational as you indicate ? I don’t think so.

Nature has equipped us and all other forms of life with what we call the “instinct of survival”. One of the first (if not the first) manifestations of the survival instinct in animals (including ourselves), which occurs on birth, is breathing. If we don’t breathe we don’t survive.

In the animal kingdom, breathing, like all other primary instincts that support survival, are imperative and, like breathing, many of them are not controlled by conscience. Similar phenomena have been observed in plant life, though, presumably, plants do not possess a conscience.

It seems obvious to me that the survival instinct is an essential cog in the wheel of “perpetual motion” of the life process. Without it, all forms of life would become extinct.

I consider that the whole life process, including the “desire to live” is perfectly rational. If it were not, I fail to see how it could possibly be so efficient and perpetuate itself as it does, or, at least, as it has done for the past 3.5 billion years or so.

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Dear Banjo,

Do you participate in life unwillingly?
Surely if that was the case, then you would by now have had plenty of opportunities to jump off a bridge. The fact is, that you haven't done so.

In any case, when I mentioned the desire to live as a candidate for a bottom-ground irrational desire, I was not referring to the biological process: we know that the human organism has built-in survival and reproductive mechanisms, but those are not desires - they are mechanisms and some of them even work while you are asleep or otherwise unconscious, intoxicated or semi-conscious.

While a creationist biologist could still call these mechanisms "rational", they would not be referring to your individual rationality anyway. An evolutionist on the other hand, would consider them instead as the result of a long series of unintelligent trials and errors.

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Dear George,

I think that choosing to accept some basic assumptions (about the world outside and inside of us) and reject others, is also a kind of action. With absolutely no desires, why would one even bother to adopt any assumption?

Dear Yuyutsu,

I think there is a difference between thinking (analysing and deciding) and actually acting. I never said that there were “absolutely no desires” to act this or that way. Conscious or subconscious desires might befog the rationale of our decision making process but thinking based on desires only is called wishful thinking lacking objectivity.