Charles J. Reid wrote:
>
> On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Tor Forde wrote:
>
> >
> > Each person has his own rationality. Find his viewpoint, his priorities,
> > his situation and his possibilities, and it is possible to see his
> > rationality. It will be conflicting with others.
> >
> > A democratic society should develop according to the rationality of its
> > members. If their rationalities becomes too conflicting the society can
> > fall apart or only be kept together with massive violence.
> >
> -- Hi, Tor!
>
> I just wanted to make some quick comments on this. First, you probably
> know of Elster's work on rationality.
I have read a few books written by Jon Elster. Is he the one?
They were written about 25 years ago, and were about history, philosophy
and game theory.
Without getting into a rationality
> debate, secondly, I think you're using 'rationality' with less care than
> necessary.
I was thinking of people's "rationale", the project of their lives,
which is often unknown, and may be lacking a few times - "the reason for
living". People try to make up a life that is coherent, where there are
some fundamental principles at the bottom. These principles can be of
many different kinds and origins.
I don't think it has been convincingly demonstrated that any
> person 'has' any rationality. If we say that people can "manifest"
> rationality, it is clear that some people never manifest rationality,
> depending on how you define it, and there are probably ten conflicting
> definitions. Finally, if we can adopt the notion of 'rational interest,'
> obvious individuals may have conflicting rational interests, and there may
> be conflicting rational interests between individuals and communities. I
> would argue that conflicting rational interests only lead to "massive
> violence" on very rare ocassions, in fact, so rare, that I cannot think of
> one now. This is the case, because "massive violence" is inconsistent with
> rational interest.
I was thinking of internal conflicts. The last decades the authorities
in Guatemala have killed more than 100.000 persons within Guatemala.
That is massive violence. And the authorities of many other countries
are killing thousands of humans in internal conflicts. And the internal
conflicts do not have to be between the authorities and parts of the
population, but can be between different groups of the population. I
guess this is well known.
The belief system that these authorities have are not rational if one
says that rationality includes universality, I mean by that that the
principles of their rationality should apply to all similar cases and
all humans, that all humans have the same rights.
But the universalistic principles are in reality quite modern.
Not long ago there were different rights and different laws for
different groups of persons in many countries.
And this was to an aristocrat quite "rational". Aristocrats did not pay
taxes in most countries.
This non universalistic "rationality", the privileges, are often what
the elites who are killing their subjects in large number are trying to
enforce.
But of course today the universalistic principle is fundamental to
rationality, and a democracy can not work if it is not accepted within
society among all major groups, because discussions and debate have no
point without it. But there are limits to this universalism: Not
everybody who owns a boat is allowed to go everywhere and catch fish.
The fish close to the coasts of a country is reserved to the fishermen
of that country. This particularism is accepted.
The two most used meanings of rationality is:
1. Instrumental rationality - how to best achieve a given goal, do a
task.
2. About the best goal, values, the just and fair way.
But "rational" is common language word and all the different meanings
this gives the word can not be excluded.
My point in the beginning was that people have their "life projects".
They have their rationality, and gives rationality and meaning to the
lives of people because the projects are directed towards other people
in some way, and they try to be coherent although they may not be
universalistic.
To keep society together with all this different "life projects", that
might be conflicting, and to find the borders between universalism and
particularism can be difficult. The "life projects" spring from the
situation that people are in and from their aspirations (it is their
aspiration). To keep all this together it is vital to have independent
democratic institutions with real power that can work with the important
situations of peoples' lives. And since working life is very important
labour unions are very important. Only via democratic debate and action
according to that debate, can the necessary universalism be achieved.
--
All the best
Tor F�rde
visit our homepage: URL::http://home.sol.no/~toforde/
email:
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