| Last Updated: 110806 |
| The Poles of Rationality |
| We are almost all aware that the word “rational” refers to the quality of our thinking. But my experience is that we very often conflate the meaning(s) of this word with those of the words “valid”, “logical”, and “reasonable”. The distinctions we need between each of these four words for the purposes of problem- solving appear to me to be beyond the scope of even the most diligent team of dictionary editors. I therefore often present my clients with a table that distinguishes the meanings implicit in these words -- by means of the factors in communications that vary with the perspectives of the parties trying to solve a problem: .. |
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| The Word "Rationality" and its Common Conflations (c) 2010 by Angus Cunningham Principal, Authentix Coaches |
I must admit that my choices for exemplars of the meaning/spirit I sense to be embodied in each of these four words are personal ones. If you should have any doubts about any of the exemplars, I invite you to reflect on the reality that there is always a titanic struggle occurring between would-be monopolists of what “the" truth is. In the current era, scientific purists who champion the idea that truth can be made up of statements that are universally true based on the repeatability of observable tests proving their validity are ranged against religious purists who champion the idea that only by privileged access to the Divine or some other authority can one be sure one is knowledgeable as to what “the truth” is. Both categories of purists are "dyed" in a wool, in my opinion, and no doubt many are "dyed" unconsciously. My selection, therefore, of exemplars in the table has no intention to identify myself in one or another of these fundamentalist camps. Each protagonist of the meaning of the word "rationality" has, in my opinion, a valuable but incomplete aspect of whole truth. As consciously as we each believe is vitally necessary to preserve our own particular life's meaning/interest, we guide our efforts to “be rational” by both our inner personal senses of truth and by our shared outer senses of what the data of which we have clear observation, including the sensory data we have of other’s presences, imply. If, therefore, you think my selection of one or another of the exemplars of rationality cited in this table is ill-chosen, I hope that feeling will not deter you from considering the three criteria in the table by which I chose them and then applying the same criteria to arrive at your own choices of exemplars. And I hope you will do this in conversation with either a close friend or an IHXEN Partner because then you will have the benefit of enlarging your sense of what the idea and value of rationality is; and then we will all grow in our capacities to sustain rationality in the service of all. Would that not be the destiny that anthropologists who coined the name "Homo Rationalis" have in mind for our species? Interestingly, the Romans didn't have a word for "reasonable". They only had a word for "rational". It must have been the French, with the word "raison", who began to introduce to the Western world at least, the distinction that now exists in English between the idea and value of the word "reasonable" and the idea and value of the word "rational". Someone once said "All progress depends on the unreasonable man". Whoever said that was (a) aware that to be rational is not the same as to be reasonable, (b) probably a man rather than a woman, and (c) not proficient enough in language usage to be both rational and reasonable at the same time. Churchill, Ike, and JFK often were proficient enough to be both rational and reasonable at the same time, although none of them at all times. Clearly, the vocabulary and idiomatic usages of vocabulary that a problem-solving language must include will be large; and those successful in using it will be aware, I believe, of the distinctions similar to the ones in the table above and also as good at listening and questioning tactfully as they are good at articulating both rationally and reasonably. Eye-Zen English is intended to comprise linguistic principles that make one's selection and interpretation of English words and structures serve problem-solving purposes. In his book “The Upside of Irrationality”, author Dan Ariely highlights this latter deficiency in the worldview of many economists. Citing data that shows very large bonuses are unlikely to improve performance, and likewise challenging many of the shibboleths of traditional economics, this book begins to show how many people in positions of power are freighted with self-image enhancing simplifications of the complexities involved in the polarity between emotionality and rationality. The realities in which we believe seem to me to be both much more complex and much simpler than many ambitious and/or fashionable professionals imagine, or at least are prepared to address in their theorizing, whether for academic discovery or for practical decision-making in relation to the great social issues of politics and organizational life. The complexity of the dichotomies involved might be represented more completely by the diagram below: .. |
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