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Rationality in Action
The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false. He then presents an alternative theory of the role of rationality in thought and action. A central point of Searle's theory is that only irrational actions are directly caused by beliefs and desires―for example, the actions of a person in the grip of an obsession or addiction. In most cases of rational action, there is a gap between the motivating desire and the actual decision making. The traditional name for this gap is "freedom of the will." According to Searle, all rational activity presupposes free will. For rationality is possible only where one has a choice among various rational as well as irrational options. Unlike many philosophical tracts, Rationality in Action invites the reader to apply the author's ideas to everyday life. Searle shows, for example, that contrary to the traditional philosophical view, weakness of will is very common. He also points out the absurdity of the claim that rational decision making always starts from a consistent set of desires. Rational decision making, he argues, is often about choosing between conflicting reasons for action. In fact, humans are distinguished by their ability to be rationally motivated by desire-independent reasons for action. Extending his theory of rationality to the self, Searle shows how rational deliberation presupposes an irreducible notion of the self. He also reveals the idea of free will to be essentially a thesis of how the brain works.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
319 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
9 people are currently reading
194 people want to read
About the author
John Rogers Searle
72 books364 followersJohn Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is an American philosopher and was the Slusser Professor of Philosophy and Mills Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and social philosophy, he was the first tenured professor to join the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. He received the Jean Nicod Prize in 2000, and the National Humanities Medal in 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 4, 2020
I read this a long time ago and was happy to read this again. John Searle's philosophical style is a mixture of common sense, the latest science, and a handful of philosophical concepts. That's what you get here too.
The first chapter lays out the problems of the classical model of rationality. This is what you see in economics and decision theory. The classical model assumes that we have a complete set of preferences and we can rank these preferences and act on them. We are regarded as irrational when we fail to act on our highest-ranked preferences or on the preference that we know would bring about the best possible outcome.
Searle argues this can't possibly be how rationality works because it doesn't accord with our experience of how it works. To be fair to the classical model, though, of course the classical model doesn't capture the everyday way we experience making decisions. The model is only effective to the extent that it can predict human behavior. And the truth is that the model is sometimes useful at predicting our behavior and sometimes it isn't.
At any rate, Searle lays out in the next chapter how we experience reasoning in action. So we have this intention to do something and also these 'gaps,' where we feel like we could do something else. For example, I can get the day started and decide whether I want to grade assignments or do something else. There's the first 'gap.' It's up to me what I decide to do. Suppose I decide to read for a while instead of grade. Well, I still have to get up and get the book and start reading. There the second gap. I could decide I want to do something and then not act on it. Suppose I got the book and decided to read a chapter. Then there is another gap after I start reading, which is reading to the end of the chapter.
Wait, isn't this just common sense? Yes. It's common sense with some philosophical concepts. He talks about 'gaps,' 'intentionality,' 'direction of fit,' 'conditions of satisfaction,' but all of it amounts to confirming common sense. The account is so ordinary in fact I won't bother going into the meaning of those terms because mostly you can describe rationality in action without recourse to them.
In the third chapter, Searle argues that all of this deliberation we're doing assumes that there is some self doing it. Easy enough.
The fourth chapter is about how our ordinary descriptions of how we reason do not function in the same way that explanations in the sciences do. For instance, in physics, you can explain the fall of a bridge with recourse to mass, gravity, and other similar concepts, and all of these things taken together make it impossible for the situation to have been otherwise. Because of physics and the law of gravity, there was no way the bridge in question wouldn't have fallen. But human beings have this experience of free will and when we talk about our actions, the way we talk about them does not mean that any of the reasons or actions are sufficient to produce the outcome. Let me illustrate this with an example. Take me reading a book again. You could ask why I'm reading a book. I could say, Because I wanted to read a book. But it's obvious that my desire to read a book was not sufficient to me reading a book. I still had to get up, get the book, and actually read it. Explanations don't work like this in science.
I've already talked too much about the book, and there's still more to cover. If any of this seems interesting to you, feel free to read it. If you think this is all a bunch of hokum, probably the book isn't for you.
The first chapter lays out the problems of the classical model of rationality. This is what you see in economics and decision theory. The classical model assumes that we have a complete set of preferences and we can rank these preferences and act on them. We are regarded as irrational when we fail to act on our highest-ranked preferences or on the preference that we know would bring about the best possible outcome.
Searle argues this can't possibly be how rationality works because it doesn't accord with our experience of how it works. To be fair to the classical model, though, of course the classical model doesn't capture the everyday way we experience making decisions. The model is only effective to the extent that it can predict human behavior. And the truth is that the model is sometimes useful at predicting our behavior and sometimes it isn't.
At any rate, Searle lays out in the next chapter how we experience reasoning in action. So we have this intention to do something and also these 'gaps,' where we feel like we could do something else. For example, I can get the day started and decide whether I want to grade assignments or do something else. There's the first 'gap.' It's up to me what I decide to do. Suppose I decide to read for a while instead of grade. Well, I still have to get up and get the book and start reading. There the second gap. I could decide I want to do something and then not act on it. Suppose I got the book and decided to read a chapter. Then there is another gap after I start reading, which is reading to the end of the chapter.
Wait, isn't this just common sense? Yes. It's common sense with some philosophical concepts. He talks about 'gaps,' 'intentionality,' 'direction of fit,' 'conditions of satisfaction,' but all of it amounts to confirming common sense. The account is so ordinary in fact I won't bother going into the meaning of those terms because mostly you can describe rationality in action without recourse to them.
In the third chapter, Searle argues that all of this deliberation we're doing assumes that there is some self doing it. Easy enough.
The fourth chapter is about how our ordinary descriptions of how we reason do not function in the same way that explanations in the sciences do. For instance, in physics, you can explain the fall of a bridge with recourse to mass, gravity, and other similar concepts, and all of these things taken together make it impossible for the situation to have been otherwise. Because of physics and the law of gravity, there was no way the bridge in question wouldn't have fallen. But human beings have this experience of free will and when we talk about our actions, the way we talk about them does not mean that any of the reasons or actions are sufficient to produce the outcome. Let me illustrate this with an example. Take me reading a book again. You could ask why I'm reading a book. I could say, Because I wanted to read a book. But it's obvious that my desire to read a book was not sufficient to me reading a book. I still had to get up, get the book, and actually read it. Explanations don't work like this in science.
I've already talked too much about the book, and there's still more to cover. If any of this seems interesting to you, feel free to read it. If you think this is all a bunch of hokum, probably the book isn't for you.
December 16, 2012
3 1/2 stars. I think that, at the psychological and linguistic level, Searle's account of rationality is mostly correct. The problems start to arise when he argues what his conception of rationality entails. For example, he claims that it entails a non-Humean notion of the self (that is, some irreducible construct as opposed to a bundle of emotions, states, memories, etc.). Now, maybe upon closer scrutiny that really would be the case, that his conception of rationality does indeed entail an irreducible notion of the self, and it could not be made sense of without that entailment. Now, if that should be the case then I would be more hesitant to accept it. However, Searle doesn't seem to give adequate consideration or make any serious attempt at integrating the Humean self with his own notion of rationality (presumably because, prima facie, it appears as if it would pose great difficulty). Still, I think, the attempt should have been made.
Furthermore, I think Searle uncritically accepts the "phenomenology" of rational choice, most notably the element of supposed free will and "the gap." "The gap"--or the idea that our psychological motives are not sufficient in determining the course of action we ultimately take, at least phenomenologically--does appear to be real, but it's unclear how rejecting the feeling of free will at the psychological level would affect his descriptions of the "the gap." In other words, certain individuals have argued that, upon close meditation, the psychological feeling of free will is itself actually an illusion. The argument is, briefly, that thoughts simply come and go, and we are no more free to think what we will think next than we are free to do what we will do next (as a result of the former). I think taking this position seriously--as ought to be done--severely complicates the picture Searle gives us.
Finally, I found the last chapter of this work, where the focus is specifically on neurobiology and free will, to be especially poor. Two accounts are given as to the way in which free will and neurobiology may interact: Psychological libertarianism with neurobiological determinism (no free will) and system causation with consciousness and indeterminacy (free will). The latter is described pretty vaguely, and I'm not sure how it could ever possibly work, neurobiologically speaking. The former, which I think is actually the more probable, is rejected by Searle. He rejects it because it would turn rational decision-making into an epiphenomenon, and that, he argues, doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, he goes on, because of the high biological cost it imposes, and in the context of evolution there is therefore no reason why it should have been selected for. That's about the extent of his argument against it, and the discussion is about as superficial as I've presented it here. One may ultimately conclude that, pace Searle, it really does not make sense, biologically speaking, but his discussion of how it could fit into evolutionary theory is distressingly shallow.
But I don't want to come off as too critical of this book. As a whole, I think it succeeds in showing the weaknesses of what Searle calls the Classical Model of Rationality, and he presents a viable, though at times problematic, alternative of the concept of rationality.
Furthermore, I think Searle uncritically accepts the "phenomenology" of rational choice, most notably the element of supposed free will and "the gap." "The gap"--or the idea that our psychological motives are not sufficient in determining the course of action we ultimately take, at least phenomenologically--does appear to be real, but it's unclear how rejecting the feeling of free will at the psychological level would affect his descriptions of the "the gap." In other words, certain individuals have argued that, upon close meditation, the psychological feeling of free will is itself actually an illusion. The argument is, briefly, that thoughts simply come and go, and we are no more free to think what we will think next than we are free to do what we will do next (as a result of the former). I think taking this position seriously--as ought to be done--severely complicates the picture Searle gives us.
Finally, I found the last chapter of this work, where the focus is specifically on neurobiology and free will, to be especially poor. Two accounts are given as to the way in which free will and neurobiology may interact: Psychological libertarianism with neurobiological determinism (no free will) and system causation with consciousness and indeterminacy (free will). The latter is described pretty vaguely, and I'm not sure how it could ever possibly work, neurobiologically speaking. The former, which I think is actually the more probable, is rejected by Searle. He rejects it because it would turn rational decision-making into an epiphenomenon, and that, he argues, doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, he goes on, because of the high biological cost it imposes, and in the context of evolution there is therefore no reason why it should have been selected for. That's about the extent of his argument against it, and the discussion is about as superficial as I've presented it here. One may ultimately conclude that, pace Searle, it really does not make sense, biologically speaking, but his discussion of how it could fit into evolutionary theory is distressingly shallow.
But I don't want to come off as too critical of this book. As a whole, I think it succeeds in showing the weaknesses of what Searle calls the Classical Model of Rationality, and he presents a viable, though at times problematic, alternative of the concept of rationality.
to-keep-reference
December 2, 2019¿Cuál es entonces la razón para una acción? [...] he escrito un libro sobre ellos.
La Mente Pág.310
La Mente Pág.310
October 25, 2011
Are there external reasons for action? Do we have free will? Searle answers the first question affirmatively but fails to provide justification that doesn't rely on question begging and intuition mongering and he doesn't provide an answer to the second question at all. He needs both external reasons and free will for the account of practical reason he defends in this book, but because he doesn't really have them the whole thing stands on rather shaky ground. Searle's version of practical reason is intuitively appealing but I cannot see how it could be right.
One of Searle's primary errors is this: he does not properly distinguish between rational actions and rational decisions. Rather, he assumes that a rational action can only be a rational action if it is preceded by a rational decision. Decisions are decisions because they occur in situations where it is open to us to choose between a set of actions we could potentially perform. Thus, he comes to the conclusion that we cannot act rationally unless there is a Self to do the deciding and unless we have the free will to decide how to act. While this is probably true of decisions–that is, for a decision to be a decision there probably needs to be genuine options available, which would not exist without free will–there is no reason to think that an action cannot be an action without free will and we have no reason to assume that such an action cannot be judged to be a rational action given the circumstances under which it is performed, even if the action was not performed "freely".
One of Searle's primary errors is this: he does not properly distinguish between rational actions and rational decisions. Rather, he assumes that a rational action can only be a rational action if it is preceded by a rational decision. Decisions are decisions because they occur in situations where it is open to us to choose between a set of actions we could potentially perform. Thus, he comes to the conclusion that we cannot act rationally unless there is a Self to do the deciding and unless we have the free will to decide how to act. While this is probably true of decisions–that is, for a decision to be a decision there probably needs to be genuine options available, which would not exist without free will–there is no reason to think that an action cannot be an action without free will and we have no reason to assume that such an action cannot be judged to be a rational action given the circumstances under which it is performed, even if the action was not performed "freely".
April 28, 2011
An excellent, well-reasoned book. Searle won me over on desire-independent reasons, although I'm not entirely convinced of his reasoning when he talks of how ought can derive from is. Anyhow, if you have an interest in a sharp mind dissecting how we think of rationality, intentions, and free will, this book is a must-read.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews