From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Tue Apr 04 2006 - 09:37:23 EDT
Well as I've emphasized in the past, social science is concerned in part with the aggregate effects of the interactions of individuals in society, and therefore with the connections between the parts and the whole. I'm aware of the marginal utility view, and, as I mentioned here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_value#Use_value_and_utility so was Marx. He wrote: "In bourgeois societies the economic fictio juris prevails, that every one, as a buyer, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of commodities". In reality, people often rush through the supermarket in 10 minutes, and, because they haven't got time for rational choices, are susceptible to the way commodities are presented, in making their choices. You ask: How can we _possibly_ make rational choices about sexuality when we are not fully aware of the extent to which those social forces created our preferences? Very easily. A rational choice as such only involves evaluating consciously, through some kind of inferential process, various possible options, in the light of relevant facts and arguments, to arrive at a consistent or workable behavioural strategy. But this choice may not involve all facts and arguments bearing on the case, nor does it necessarily imply anything in particular about the values or interests involved, other than the intrinsic practical value of the inferential process itself. Bourgeois society values behavioural consistency, predictability and reliability, because this is necessary for the contractual obligations involved in the trading process on which it is based. Hence Hayek (and Adam Smith etc.) argues that market expansion automatically generates a moral behaviour which is best for all people, but in reality, as I've argued, markets imply no specific morality of their own, beyond what is necessary to settle commercial transactions and contracts (promise-keeping etc.). That is why the creation of new markets where non exist is often such a difficult topic for modern economics. A rational choice is not automatically a good choice, or the best choice. In the neoclassical model, a rational choice is a choice which best promotes self-interest, but this is obviously a very narrow view of rational choice, based on a very narrow concept of human nature, indeed the very notion of "self-interest" can be problematic. And often it is a tautology, i.e. if person X chooses Y, that must be, because it is in his self-interest. Underlying this is an ideology about what rational behaviour is, and that ideology reduces to certain values and behavioural norms deemed desirable. A person might be perfectly aware of social conditioning processes, without this in any way being helpful in making a decision or a choice. In short, rationality is often conflated with: - having sound judgement (but a judgement may be rational yet unsound) - common sense (the majority might be quite wrong) - not being extreme or excessive or foolish or arbitrary (but such behaviour, if it occurs, may have a strong rational basis) - justifiable in terms of reasons (but the reasons might be awful) - sane (but insane things may be done by clinically sane people) - good (but reasoned acts may be very evil in some sense) - morally acceptable (but reason may well go "against the grain") You wrote: So long as patriarchy exists neither men nor women can be truly and fully rational. Well, saying this implies that the good society is a rational society, and that rational behaviour is per definition good behaviour, roughly as Hegel envisaged. But that is highly questionable, and begs the question of what behaviour can be considered rational. Many aspects of human life simply aren't rational, and there is no requirement or need for them to be rational. I don't think we should make a fetish of rationality either. Japanese people are generally very rational people, their average IQ scores are among the highest in the world, higher than the US (see the refs at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_IQ), yet Japanese society is also a rather patriarchal society. There are very rational Japanese people, who are also very patriarchal. What you are saying is that Japan would be fully rational, only if it wasn't patriarchal. Maybe so, but this already implies certain values as rational values, a certain view of a culture of rationality. Essentially, in rational ethics, the critique of patriarchy concerns the application of morally (ir-)relevant human differences, but this argument assumes precisely a rational and universalist ethics, rather than e.g. a divine ethics or a tribal ethics. What these different ethical theories may have in common may be only the postulate that behaviour should be non-arbitrary. But non-arbitrary behaviour is not necessarily rational either. Generally, in these discussions about rationality, people smuggle in lots of moral contraband, i.e. they are asserting values in the name of rationality. This is very noticeable in Marxist circles, and Marxism really failed to a large extent in making theoretical sense of the moral dimension of human life, notwithstanding all odes to value theory. But even so the very meaning of rationality itself is subject to historical change. As Marx/Engels noted, what is regarded as "human" and "rational" (or "inhuman" and "irrational") changes in different historical epochs in accordance with the values and interests of social classes and nations. In ancient China, e.g. infanticide was perfectly acceptable, nowadays that is no longer the case. Typical of imperialism is that the imperialist country tries to impose its own model of rationality on the dominated country (cf. Iraq and Afghanistan). This is called "modernisation" and in part postmodernity is a revolt against that idea. In the socialist tradition, there is often a strong underlying assumption that only socialism would be a rational society, but often this is more a technocratic fantasy. If we are to be truly liberated, I suspect we also have to be liberated from all sorts of false and unhelpful notions of what rationality is, and of its appropriate place in society. If think Freud's idea of rationalisation is often useful here, i..e. the human propensity to invent, post-fectum, a structure of "reasons" for human behaviour which obscure the real motives. Jurriaan And daddy doesn't understand it He always said she was as good as gold And he can see no reason Cos there are no reasons What reason do you need to be shown Tell me why I don't like Mondays I want to shoot The whole day down
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