The Rationality of Irrationality

Whether or not the world is rational is a question that is rarely asked. I suspect this is because the answer to this is guided by opinion and emotion much like any other religious questions. I would like to define the word rational in terms of understandability for simplicity; however, it seems that doing so would simplify the argument too much. A reductionist atheist I would presume sees the world as obviously rational(although due to their individualistic origins this might not be a good assumption). This is because, when you get down to it, everything is the reasonable result of rational, causal events. Therefore assuming you know the basics of these causal events, you can understand them (here lies a mighty flaw to the perspective though: that you -can- know all the basics, more on that later). This leads to a focus on the rational(what is), rather than the irrational(what is not)

Alternatively, a theist would assume that the world itself is not rational, as its source god acts without explanation. It is by definition not understandable-- "god works in mysterious ways" and all that jazz. In this sense, the theist places their focus on the irrational, or by the atheists' definition: that which is -not-. Given this is the tip of the spear of the argument between the two but in my opinion is the absolute least important and most distracting aspect of it. They are not so much arguing about existence, so much as semantics. They argue past each other and may as well speak a different language. But I digress...

I disagree with both groups but it is difficult to pinpoint the ways in which I do. A good place to start is that for an atheist, is the earlier mentioned assumption that -if- we understand the basics, we can understand everything beyond them. I see two flaws here. One is my favorite subject of scaled self-reference. "If we understand then we can understand". There must always be a level beforehand. Even if the digital universe hypothesis, that there is a final limit of scale, the study of the interactions at that final infinitesimal scale would be of an unforeseen complexity. This is the second flaw: the complexity of interaction, despite being in my opinion rational-consistent-causal, is absolutely not understandable. I mean to say that, while hindsight might be usable to explain something, there is no predictive value. This flaw is huge when considered at all scales.

How does one explain Psychology in terms of Newtonian Physics? How does one explain a political uprising in terms of Chemistry? Given it is easy(sometimes) to explain singular events one scale above, the structure and function of DNA in terms of chemistry. But to go 2 or more scales you must either use a symbology that loses the lower layer information, or must have an understanding of the whole of the lower layer. I see that this may seem a bit tenuous, so I hope to give this a more detailed explanation in the future.

This leads me to claim that rationality is, oddly enough, irrational. I do not have enough "evidence" as strong evidentialist reductionists would demand to claim that evidentialist reductionism is rational. A self referential loop that leaves us with only irrational options: reject it entirely due to self destruction? accept it anyway? or my favorite, pick something in between? To reject the concept of evidence outright to me is absurd. To deny that something happens because of something else borders on madness. But despite this, rejecting things outright because of insufficient evidence, to reject irrationality outright brings one into an overconfident trap, and one that is detrimental to what it is to be human. To only swim in an ocean of certainty is to attempt to swim in ice.

This brings me back to the questions raised by defining rationality as what is, and irrationality as what is not. I'd rather define rationality as what definitely is, and irrationality as what -could- be. The epic failures of course are irrational, but so are the epic victors. They are risk-takers. To rely on rationality alone, is to rely on stagnation and status quo. To see the world as rational, and simultaneously reject the irrational is to reject not only change for the worse, but also change for the better.