Yesterday, we started a discussion about what "rationality" is. Some important points that we raised include the following.
There is a difference between the words we use and the things they refer to. For example, if by rationality you mean "figuring out the means to get something done" as Katie said, and I mean "understanding causes," then we are talking about different things. In that case, we need to figure out how to talk about the same things using words. The problem is words there. In that particular case, I think that we could agree that "understanding causes" includes "figuring out the means to get something done," but "understanding causes" also includes much more.
In other cases, the problem is not words. For example, if you claim that "rationality is something selected for by evolution," while I claim that rationality is the gift of a divine creator, then we disagree about how the world works.
Rationality can exist within a person all by his or her lonely. But rationality also has interpersonal functions. I hope that we can return to this later in the class. It will turn out that using our logic and information about the world to formulate rules about the world that apply for us personally is something that makes us who we are AND yet that same procedure, using logic and information to formulate rules about the world allows us not just to communicate but to cooperate with others.
Some people think that I might rationally understand something, but not be able to explain it. Socrates would disagree: he would say that if you cannot explain it, you do not really understand it. If you cannot explain it and teach it to another person, then you do not understand it, says Socrates.
Sometimes you "rationalize" something. "Rationalize" has at least two common meanings in English: one meaning is "to make something conform to reason." The other meaning is "to come up with plausible reasons for doing something without understanding the true reasons why you are doing it or in spite of having good reasons not to do it." For example, you break the law by speeding on the highway. You then rationalize it by saying that everyone else does it, the police do not stop people unless they are going significantly above the speed limit (i.e. it's "OK" to go 30 in a 25 zone, but it's not OK to go 50 in a 25 zone), and you really need to get to where you are going in a hurry. The conclusion of your rationalization is that it is OK for you to speed. But you still know that you should not break the law, and so your "rationalization" is not fully rational: you have just pasted over a contradiction in your beliefs. How could it be OK to speed and not OK to break the law?
Rationality has to do with how you explain the world to yourself. In our reading in Griffiths, we will be watching Griffiths argue about how we should explain emotion. One of his biggest concerns will be to identify how we classify emotions and what principles underly our classifications. When we classify things, we might think there are real divisions in the world that correspond to our classification. For instance, from the point of view of a mailing room worker, there are things that fit in a standard box, things that fit in a standard envelope, etc. and things that do not fit. But is that a good way to divide the world? NO, not at all: it does not tell us anything more about the objects than their relation to some container. A better way to classify things might be something like a division between artificial and natural. If we know that something is artificial, that tells us a lot of things about it. Griffiths will claim that we should privilege whatever division tells us the most about the world it divides.
Rationality for most people involves logic, as Graham said.