Rationality and Evaluation

This article illustrates how important some evaluations can be and the fact that they are best made with a combination of rationality AND intuition, gut, feelings and other components that aren't always perceived as being rational.

The role of rationality in evaluation came up in many of my interviews.  The following quotes from an interview with Chauncey Riddle, a professor emeritus of philosophy at BYU illustrates some of the issues, which I summarize this way: Most people believe evaluations should be rational but in practice, they go with their feelings, hunches, the Spirit, their conscience, the Light of Christ and/or other inclinations that don't always appear to be rational.

R: Well, I've learned that yes, that you can't evaluate without real help from the Spirit. But if you use your own judgment solely, you're very error-prone.

DDW: Even if you're trying to be righteous and...

R: Even if you're trying to do what's right. And the only real safeguard you have is to make sure that you and the Spirit are on the same wavelength. And if you are, it may appear to be a foolish thing you're doing, but it will turn out alright.

DDW: Now that's a theme I've heard from a lot of the people I've interviewed—they'll often say, I have these professional standards I was supposed to follow. I had peers around me that were telling me what they thought I should do. I had precedents, things that have happened in the past that told me what I should do. But eventually, I went with my gut feeling or my feelings about it, and about what was the right thing to do. And sometimes if they're LDS, they'll say, that was the Spirit, sometimes if they're not they'll just go with those other words. But essentially they’re saying, evaluation can be very rational and have all these rational parts to it, but eventually, the tough decisions or the ones you look back on and feel really good about, have some element of the Spirit guiding you.

R: I don't believe that people are rational creatures. I think they try to be sometimes. Some individuals try to be rational. Others pride themselves for not being rational. But the rational ones wind up acting just like the ones who don't believe in rationality. They finally do what they feel like doing.There are no rational choices. Ultimately they're all irrational.

DDW: Irrational or a-rational?

R: Non-rational. You cannot rationally justify all choices. You can invent justifications for a lot of decisions, but ultimately every decision comes down to what people want to do. We never are in control of the facts on the case to know all the facts. We're never in control of all the possibilities for our actions. And therefore when we make a decision, we're always taking a leap of faith.

DDW: Like if you decide to marry somebody, you really don't know where that's going to go.

R: You don't. You take a leap of faith. Either faith in yourself or faith in God or faith in something. You can make all the rational determinations you want, and be very cool and calculating about it, but the reason always fails. You never get enough information to make your decision rational. We just aren't equipped to be able to do that. That's why righteousness is never, you can never be righteous on your own. Righteousness is doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason. And you have to be omniscient or omnipotent to pull that off. And since we're not, we're never righteous on our own. We're only righteous when we act in accordance with the instructions of He Who is righteous. The Savior is righteous. So the Savior is the source of all real good in this world. Anybody who makes a good decision, makes it with the Savior's help, whether they know it or not. No man is sufficient unto himself, though some pretend to be.

Anything can be justified rationally. You just invent the premises that you want and you need to conclude something. And everybody does it and everybody is good at it, because we’re taught that by our civilization.

DDW: The more successful people are even better at it.

R: Logic doesn’t prove that anything is true, because it all depends on your premises. You can make any premises you want for any argument. That’s what self-justification is: picking your premises so you can prove what you want.