What’s the difference between intellect and rational?
A recent New York Times article (September 16) asked this question, in the context of behavioral economics. Just what is the difference, and, by the way, what is irrationality?
Putting aside irrationality for the moment, let’s tackle first the concept of intellect. Although I’ve expressed myself on this in a previous post, let’s have a go at it again. It’s the main purpose of our human evolution from sensing, to awareness, and finally, to our brain, our mind, and our intellect.
So, why did nature evolve our brain to the masterpiece it is today? Survival, of course. It perfects our ability to understand our world and then solve a myriad of problems as they come our way throughout our lives. It’s not measured by I.Q. but it’s finding some success in our lives, which of course is not something we can measure. First, it involves creating beliefs that define our world and then using this understanding along with our other various mental abilities to confront and solve situations and problems as they come our way. This is using our intellect and it largely determines how well we do in our lives.
Can the dictionary help us here? “Intellect is the ability to learn and reason,†and “rational is the ability to reason.†Not overly helpful.
So, what is rational? It’s our mental ability to be precise in tackling logical problems, especially in mathematical reasoning. This is only critical for us humans a few times in our lives, versus using our intellect often even on a daily basis. We mostly need and use our intellectual abilities (not to mention our sub-conscious thinking, but that’s another subject for another day). How often does one need to apply the strictest logic to get by in life? Very few. If a doctor tells us that a medical operation is deadly 5% of the time. This discourages most people from having the needed operation, as reported by behavioral economists. The answer, of course, is to turn it around and think that it’s 95% successful. All it takes is more complete thinking, simply turning around the sentence.
Now we come to the controversial concept: irrationality. Here the dictionary is helpful. “Irrational means without reason, incoherent, illogical, without sanity.†And how does one solve insanity? Not by turning a sentence around, but by psychiatry and drugs. It’s paranoia, depression, schizophrenia, and the like.
So, behaviorists would do well to turn the sentence around and not call it irrational. To solve what behaviorist calls irrationality is simply to think more completely, which doesn’t sound irrational at all.
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Graduated with a PhD in Quran and Hadith from Razavi University of Islamic Sciences.
1 å¹´Hello What has influenced people's decisions in your example is the power of imagination, emotions, and inculcate, of course, this last case may be effective in reality, but wise person who is guided by the light of reason, see no difference between these tow sentences and even a person who has believed in God through reason is not affected by the last one. Like a Shia person because in the teachings of the infallible Shia imams, who consider reason to be the basis of theology and religion, it has been stated that if a person despite inculcate, trusts to God Almighty, he will see nothing but good.