Charles University

Faculty of Social Sciences

Institute of Economic Studies
2021

IS HUMAN A RATIONAL BEING?

Hukovych Bohdan
31.10.2021
 Contents
1 INTRODUCTION 3

2 WHAT IS RATIONALITY 4

3 THE HISTORY OF RATIONAL THINKING 5

4 SCIENCE AND HUMAN BRAIN 7

5 ETHICS AND RATIONALITY 8

6 ECONOMICS AND RATIONALITY 11

7 POLITICS AND RATIONALITY 13

8 RATIONALITY AND SOCIETY 15

9 CONCLUSION 16

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1 INTRODUCTION
There exists a serious question and the answer to this question might change everything
that we did know, that we know now and that we will know in the future. That question
is deeply fundamental for our species. It’s the way we think. We’re the only species on
the planet and presumably in the whole Solar system or even the universe as we know
it, that can realize itself, feel the world around it, reflect on some changes in this world
not only based on some instincts, some premeditated impulses of the brain that work
involuntarily, without realizing them by its subject. That is what differs us from any
other living beings. That is what we’re used to for thousands of years, what we take
for granted. We can’t imagine our life without it because we can think only within our
frames. We’re not able to get beyond them no matter how we desire it. This higher state
of our species is called conscientiousness, i.e., the way we perceive everything around us.
The main fundamental part of it is thinking. But what does it actually mean to think
and, most importantly, what is the right way to think? The answer to the latter question
will mark the destination of this essay.
This right way of thinking is exactly the main topic of my pondering. It is called
our rationality. Then what is exactly the right way of thinking? Why do we know what
is right to think about? Where did it arise? In our conventional thinking, everything
is rather simple. It is not so hard to answer those questions. We sub-conscientiously
know what is right and wrong, good and bad, wise and fatuous, rational and irrational.
Nevertheless, the reality appears to be more complicated than it seems if we dig deeper.
That is what we’re going to delve into here.
If we try to dig deeper and pursue this ulterior point that is beyond our conventional
perception which regards to the process of thinking we’d find only even more complicated
questions than at the beginning. But then again this is the way of discovering. When
we plunge into the ocean of skepticism, there is no way back. Kant wrote: “Skepticism
is a resting place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings,
but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement” [1]. It implies that we always leave
some answer when we’re pondering on some seemingly unanswerable question. This small
answer someday may lead to a formation of a bigger picture. Coherently all those small
pieces could merge into one utter idea or theory. That is the way of change.

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2 WHAT IS RATIONALITY
Rationality is the quality or state of being rational – that is, being based on or agreeable
to reason [2]. From that, the reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by
drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth
[3]. Of those definitions, we can deduce that when we’re using our logic and draw some
conclusions using it, we are able to behave rationally. Hence, behaving rationally means
that we think before acting. We consider the pros and cons of different variations of acts
that we can perform in particular situation. Of course, that system of pros and cons is
highly complicated and convoluted. We think not only about individual consequences but
also about social consequences to the people that are around us, who that act may affect.
Those considerations are relevant in the situation when we’re not bound to egoistic ethics
and if there is some type of “social contract” in society.
After all, we want our actions to be virtuous. To bring some utility ultimately or to
be ethically right. That would mean that we act rationally. This need is entrenched in
our mentality, but the reality is often different. Betweenwhiles, we are prone to violate
some rules and other people’s rights to benefit from that act in some way. Those mundane
actions surely are not virtues, but it is our nature.
Moving closer to the main topic, as we have defined what is rationality and rational
behavior, it is important to start considering this question – why do we believe that human
is a rational being? To answer that question, we’ll have to come back to the inception of
humanity. We are the only species that survived and adapted not by using the power of
our muscles or good hiding abilities or even poison in our body, but by using our mental
power. We survived and conquered the whole world using that small organ inside our
skull. The evolution kept going from the first primitive Homo sapiens 300,000 years ago
all through tens of thousands of years approximately to the 20th century B.C. At that
time people started making bigger communities and creating relations that could have
something in common with our today’s relations. From that time our intellect evolved
exponentially fast. We organized our society, created law, economic system, sciences, etc.
That couldn’t have been possible if a man would have only reveled in pleasure when he
had had something to eat and with whom to mate like an ape.
All that progress is made due to the power of reason. The strongest and simplest part
of it is probably its ability to make causal relations. That is a base where all thoughts

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derive their pith. From that argumentation, we tend to think that human is a rational
being. Whether it is enough we will discuss later.

3 THE HISTORY OF RATIONAL THINKING

From my perspective, it is evident that people weren’t rational from the starting point
of their existence. They were much akin to monkeys – their ancestors. Along with the
evolution of their brain evolved their ability to reason. Throughout centuries that process
was in progress, even now. Closer to the time when Homo sapiens created the first big
communities their brain was the same as ours. But their behavior differed from ours
to a drastic extent. Perhaps there is more sense in comparing their behavior with their
ancestors as they were in the earliest stages of that evolution, assuming that we’re growing
exponentially. The same way humans evolved further. But where was that point when
people proclaimed that they are rational and based on that started building their society
accordingly?
The evolution history of human society kept going through Ancient Greece, Rome
Empire, all the way through the period of dominant religious philosophy and dogma
in the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The first ideas about human rationality were
already in Ancient Greece. To Socrates, human wasn’t yet a “rational animal”, but rather
a thinking being who is endowed with the ability of speech [4]. It wasn’t then a major
topic of philosophy until the age of Enlightenment came on the scene, central objective of
the history of rationality. Their philosophers, mainly from the continental part of Europe
proclaimed a man as a rational being. “Cogito, ergo sum” – the most famous Descartes’
phrase that became a watchword for that period. For those philosophers, a man was the
sole owner of himself. He could choose whatever he wants to do by whatever methods he
desires. They crossed the Rubicon of human dogma and put God on the path of oblivion
and death. This continued until the time when Nietzsche gloriously proclaimed his death.
The concepts of “subject” and “object” superseded him on the highest point of human
belief. Under the definition of “subject” these philosophers understood a rational being
that is able to think independently, that can realize itself as a master of his own fate, and
predominantly, that he can turn mountains if he wants to. That was the starting point.
The contemporary philosophy, i.e., postmodern, changed the agenda to a slightly

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different manner. The most important its property is a complete affinity with the de-
velopment of science. Nowadays the role of science plays a crucial role in human society
because nobody can comprehend himself without the benefits that it brought. There is a
consensus on this point almost in every stratum of society.
This philosophy came with the idea of repudiating the concepts of “subject” and “ob-
ject”. From their standpoint, brain is only a complicated machine which has all the
properties of a simple machine, and therefore could be completely understood, predicted,
and fooled. Or there is a possibility that the world around us is only a simulation of some
implausibly strong computer. If that is true, everything around us is only some set of
zeros and ones. Hence our conscientiousness, thinking processes, and all related things are
illusory and that omnipotent machine is thinking instead of us. This is a hard challenge
for human rationality in its initial definition.

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4 SCIENCE AND HUMAN BRAIN
As I already mentioned, from the viewpoint of science, our brain is a very complicated
machine that has its “engines”, essential parts which are doing their peculiar functions.
They consume energy so to work further. That energy comes from food, water, sleep,
etc. (that is the simple model of its work without rigid scientific definitions so as to not
complicate the essay because it is not so relevant here). From this assumption, we can
deduce that its work could be explicitly described and therefore predicted. From different
analyses of our behavior and predictions of our brain activity, we know that it has some
patterns. These patterns are ubiquitous and could pop up in each person. And what is
the most interesting is that their behavior is often wrong. It implies that people behave
in a way that does not bring the best outcome. Brain could be easily fooled for example
by the “anchoring” effect” [5].
There is also a famous example of judges approving more indictments shortly before
lunch break when they are hungrier than in the beginning. From the financial sphere, this
type of irrationality occurs for example when there is a bubble on the market. The sole
existence of those bubbles indicates the power of emotions upon rationality in people’s
minds.
Heuristics can similarly bring some cases of irrationality such as “loss aversion effect”,
“conjunction fallacy effect” and already mentioned “anchoring effect”. This could represent
to some extent the example of irrational behavior based on the wrong information or
testimony.
The progress of science lets us see clearer what our thinking is, how it works and where
it comes from. There are no more endeavors to find a soul inside our body. Nobody now
derives a human reason from the heart or from God. "And long before the halfway point
is reached, they bury a poor devil in the ground," said Faust. This represents how human
knowledge evolves and for us presumably there is still plenty of time to live without the
concept of God and dogma. For scientists, our heart is only a mechanism that pumps
blood. There is only one organ where our conscientiousness is in and that is our brain.
It is apparent that it generally works logically. Our behavior is not random most of the
time. Our brain uses its patterns to derive logical conclusions. Thus, our ability to reason
is something that exists to some extent. Therefore, we could proclaim ourselves rational
to a certain degree. But how does it work in the major spheres of society? Where is

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the boundary between rationality and irrationality in our brain? Is there a gap between
them? And if so, how it could impact society?

5 ETHICS AND RATIONALITY

Our society is built up of many people that have some relations with one another. From
first societies in the Middle East to enormous agglomerations and countries that are
linked with each other by an infinite amount of those relations. Our society evolved and
to examine why it happened in such wise we should understand how those relations work,
how people defined what they want and what is good for them. What is even more
interesting is what our rationality narrates about that. For people to keep good relations
with one another certain rules were needed that would be either implemented naturally
inside our behavior or externally by implementing them into the law of society. Otherwise,
people would do everything they wanted, i.e., take other people’s property, kill them for
the sake of pleasure, etc. But is it rational?
For the human species building better conditions of living is good, pleasure is good,
unpleasure is bad, etc. That’s how we define what is good for us and rational behavior
in society would be to maximize all those benefits. As we know, when the society is
growing, any self-organized activity is almost impossible without external ruling. That is
why we created a state to rule us. But could rational beings behave only in that way that
would make everyone better off without any external ruling that would ban some activity
and punish them for not doing so? Probably no and that is another evidence of human
irrationality.
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are” said President Roosevelt once
and so I will do. In society, we have those rules that govern our behavior as parts of
that society. Ethics is what tells us which rules are fair and unfair, good and bad for
society. Without it, we can’t imagine the progress that men made and the future that
is ahead of us. But it is not science that has “precise” facts and “truth”. Dealing with
people, everything is relative. There is a famous phrase that says: “There is no perfection
in human knowledge”. To apply it to my thought I’d rather transform it into: “There is
even less perfection in human knowledge about human knowledge”.
If we consider different moral theories and their views on some questions we will always

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come to contradictions. For example, never-ending fights of utilitarians against almost
every other moral theory that respects human fundamental rights. These fights could
appear even in closely related theories on some problematic questions. What then we
can say about human rationality? Should we rule ourselves using arguments of utility or
respecting the rights of other people or even ultimate justice? As we remember for the
human species good is what makes them better off. But considering different points of
view a question arises, whether it implies building welfare for the society as a whole or
for every person individually? That’s the ground for those fights. But what would our
rationality say about it? I’d argue that nothing because both points are rational, but
contradictory in their nature.
That is the philosophy of Individualism and Holism. From that, we can derive two
different types of rationality, namely individual and holistic rationality. This is what
creates a dichotomy in our knowledge. What is rational from my viewpoint is completely
irrational from the viewpoint of the society or some smaller group of people. Can we say
that some of those rationalities are more rational than others? If we weren’t humans,
I’d say that Holistic rationality is wiser, but for the individual, it doesn’t make sense to
sacrifice himself for the sake of society. Human nature is not about holistic rationality in
the extreme case of self-sacrifice. But a complete individualistic approach wouldn’t allow
the society to even appear and therefore also is not what would be the source of welfare
for humanity. Society necessarily requires some sacrifices for the common good. Hence,
men should always somehow balance between these two rationalities. But what would a
complete rationality mean in the case that there exist two of them?
There could be two points about how we can answer this question. First from the
viewpoint of a sole human and the second from the side of society. As we’ve explored
earlier humans could not behave completely rationally in a holistic manner, therefore
somebody else ought to do that instead of us. Along with evolving science we learned
how to create something that can “think” to some degree and that is artificial intelligence
or algorithm to be more precise. These machines do not have any emotions, errors in
their conclusions (in the case that everything works properly), ergo their decisions we can
assume as completely rational. What will happen when we create so strong and powerful
algorithm capable of processing more than the whole humanity put together? The most
evident answer would be to proclaim that it is smarter than we are and therefore it is wise

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to assign him as our leader, so it can govern us and tell us what is right to do. Sounds
terrifying, but it is difficult to make any strong objection against this.
But how would it decide what is right to do? We probably won’t allow him to reason
only in a holistic manner, so his conclusions don’t tell us to go and kill somebody for the
sake of utility for society. He will probably reason in the golden middle point between
holistic and individual rationality. In this case, it is not neglecting the interests of society
and the interests of an individual. Or rather, it’d neglect simultaneously both their
interests but to a tolerable extent. This concept of the golden middle point is probably
the only philosophical truth that could be proven. It works well in almost every aspect of
human life. Especially here in ethics, it could be applicable in such manner. That point
is connecting the interest of the society and an individual here and therefore it is what
we can proclaim a complete rationality.

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6 ECONOMICS AND RATIONALITY
Considering economics and its different schools and theories, we can see that they treat a
man in different ways. Some of them even come to complete contradictions. Rationality
is often the main point of their arguments. For economics, it is important to understand
how people behave in society so as to explore their actions in exchange relations, their
choices in these relations. Only when we spot some patterns in this behavior, we can
start pondering about how the whole apparatus of a country’s economy works or even the
whole world economy. That is the point where rationality comes on the scene because
the answer to whether human behavior is rational or irrational would tell us how that
economy works.
The Austrian school of economics is probably the most prominent, ruminating on the
concept of rationality. First of all, they treat every human as necessarily always a rational
being. Hereof, they derive the theory of choice and build their assumptions. For them,
human causality works always and without any errors.
Of course, when studying economics, we often come across examples of human absolute
irrational behavior and can easily find issues in Austrian logic. For example, I have
already mentioned the bubble on the financial market. We all know the rule of supply
and demand. The higher the supply the lower the price. It is clearly based on human
nature. But considering the financial markets, that rule works absolutely in a different
manner. The higher the price, the more people desire to buy that financial product. If
something is growing incredibly fast it becomes very trendy and admirable because of the
people who benefited from this. Hearing all those stories, everybody else starts to buy
that product, believing that they will also earn. This is the process of growing bubble and
its nature – human emotions. The same example could be mentioned about trademarks
and advertisements. Human emotions are crucial even in these spheres.
Holistic and individual rationality are not the exceptions here. The notorious concept
of tragedy of common resource for example. One and all wish to let their cows pasture on
the glade. That is the rational behavior of maximizing the returns, but in the long run,
there is no longer any grass on the glade and all owners of cows suffer from consequences.
On second thought, they can organize their behavior so everyone will be better off, and
that glade won’t turn into a sandlot in the long run. Hereof, we can easily spot the
examples of individual and holistic rationality.

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 This effect is evidently bad for society, and we can’t rely on human responsibility
to resolve this issue. Most of the people tend to behave in a more individualistic way,
neglecting the effect on society. From that a question arises, whether we can adjust
human behavior to the complete rationality, to that golden middle point. Of course,
it’s government‘s goal to fight such problems to fight such issues. It can ban or limit
somebody from some activity that hurts society. It can create the right incentives in
order for people to behave better or it can make an effort to educate people so they could
realize the consequences of their actions. These paternalistic functions are probably the
most fundamental for government. “Government exists to protect people from themselves”
– one famous phrase says. From my perspective, this is the only way to adjust human
behavior purposely.
On the other hand, we know that when we coerce people, when we explicitly affect
their behavior, it could not be efficient because their nature would oppose it. People would
always want to violate your rules. But there is much more effective and wiser strategy on
which the whole our hodiernal life is built. And that strategy implies connecting individual
and holistic rationality, making them work together to achieve a desirable outcome for
both sides. That means that when people strive for their individual benefit, they benefit
the whole society. That is the foundation of economic thinking. The concept of invisible
hand is what embodies this strategy in the frames of economics. This idea is beyond the
concept of golden middle point. I’d assert that it is rather in another dimension of this
spectrum of individual and holistic rationality. In another dimension those two extreme
points are the parts of something uniform.
From that viewpoint, individualistic rationality is complete rationality. But unfor-
tunately, it couldn’t be applied to every part of human life. On some questions holism
and individualism have completely different opinions. Nevertheless, there exists a way of
fooling those differences in opinions and if they could be applied in some part of our life
it’d be perhaps the best decision that has ever existed.

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7 POLITICS AND RATIONALITY
I’ve already mentioned the reason why the existence of government is so crucial for hu-
manity. As we’ve discovered, a human being is neither completely rational nor irrational.
Institute of law exists for those purposes, namely, to govern our behavior and prevent us
from anarchistic collapse. The only way the state can coerce us is by using force. As
comrade Trotsky once said: “Every state is founded on force”. It is the nature of the
state. The main instrument for that is the law and its legislative power upon us. But
the law is not everything. The government cannot write down every possible aspect of
human behavior into the law. It is undoubtedly impossible. Ergo, every competent jurist
knows that law couldn’t fully describe human morality. For them, morality and law only
partially overlap but do not utterly resemble each other.
But what about that aspect of human morality that is not written in the law. That is
something that internally coerces us generally to do the right thing. That is the internal
feeling of law. Natural theory of law tells us that that is the only way to think about
law. On the other hand, exists Positivist’s theory that rejects internal feeling and uses
deduction beyond our morality. What is rational from that point? The answer seems to
lie in the nature of human rationality. If we were completely rational our internal feeling
and morality would be perfect too, without any need in pondering beyond our morality.
That is the reason why those two theories exist. One invisibly treats a man as rational
and the other as irrational. Their existence supports the claim that a human is neither
rational nor irrational.
Returning to the idea of politics, it is important to explore relations between the
political regime and rationality. Throughout the history of humanity, there were different
types of political regimes. Starting from the absolute power of one man over the state
to the power of people, i.e., monarchy and democracy. Nowadays humanity has realized
that the best type of organization that works properly is democracy. But is it the most
rational decision that could exist?
Many philosophers thought about that question. Almost all of them though came to
contradictions in their conclusions. From Plato to Postmodern those conclusions changed
along with the agenda of the period. The brightest examples of those pondering that
reflect philosophers’ societies are their utopias about the world. Those utopias reflected
the most common and desired ideas of a society and steered the process of development.

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Starting with Plato’s utopia, which claimed that the state should be ruled by philosophers
as they know more about human nature, philosophical truth and thus know better how to
organize society. Children should be raised by those who know how to raise them in the
right way. This utopia reflected the period of the dominance of ancient philosophers which
were presumably the most sentient. More’s utopia depicted an island in which there is no
money, everything is shared, and the organization is quite different from More’s England.
Bacon’s utopia similarly showed an island, but in which scientists governed the society.
Those representations of a state as they were never realized showed either their nonex-
istence or their wrong comprehension of human society. But the answer is both concur-
rently. On the one hand, it is fairly palpable that they could not be realized dealing with
humans. It’d create a lot of unstable and unequal states of affairs. In a society with a
great number of people, it’d be hard to persuade people that, for example, scientists are
the best choice to lead them. On the other hand, society shouldn’t be organized in such
wise because the sole human nature is against that. Scientists and philosophers should
do their work and not spend time on such things as governing society.
This conclusion leads us to another argument for human partial rationality. As people
cannot realize those utopias even if they wanted to, signifies that they are not rational to
this extent. But we organize ourselves in a rational way that corresponds to our nature.
We know what could be done and what couldn’t. From that point, we can fundamentally
understand what democracy is, namely the organization that corresponds to our nature.
It is known that democracy has a lot of flaws that we somehow try to resolve. Some of
them are imminent for a democratic society. As I’ve mentioned there is no perfection in
human knowledge, hence we also cannot construct a perfect political system. Democracy
as of now is the best choice for us unless probably the omnipotent algorithm could change
something. It is still open for debate.

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8 RATIONALITY AND SOCIETY
We can now tie the various strands of argument together, in order to emphasize the
importance of the concept of society. Mainly, to answer crucial questions related to ratio-
nality, i.e., which consequences cause human partial rationality? What bad effects could
be reduced, and good effects increased if people were more rational or even completely
rational?
The concepts of individual and holistic rationality could give us some answers. In
the situation where the system isn’t built in a way that treats individual desires, human
individual rationality brings only problems in the long run. On the other hand, holistic
rationality always violates individual rights and harms those individuals. For society as
a whole, holistic rationality brings only good. That is the point of holism. Therefore, we
can deduce that society requires this holistic approach, otherwise, it causes great problems
inside the community. Thus, as I defined complete rationality - that it is a golden middle
point between individual and holistic approach, always harms the society to some extent
because it cannot rely only on a holistic approach. Some decisions should be neglected
from this perspective.
Does it mean that ultimately society and individuals cannot desire the same? It is
wrong, at least from the viewpoint that society is not something completely different
from individuals, but it consists of them. This entity always desires what every individual
desire. If for every individual the ultimate welfare would bring not only his wellbeing
but the welfare of his neighbors, friends, citizens of his state, and at the end the whole
humanity, then his interests merge with the interest of the entire society. Therefore, they
could be shared.
Globally, today we can contemplate this shift from sole individual desires to more
general ones. As people become more educated, they tend to take into consideration not
only their cravings but also the needs of society. That is generally called responsibility.
That is why more and more people become vegetarians, start recycling plastic, etc. They
sacrifice some pleasure, time so as to correspond with the interests of the whole society
since they know that it’ll bring them pleasure ultimately. Mostly, this sacrifice is not
something arduous and big, as in some extreme examples of sacrificing family members
for the sake of society. Hence, they could be carried over.

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9 CONCLUSION
Summarizing all I have described, the most important idea that is worth bringing is that
the world is not divided into black and white. There would always be something in
between, something beyond. There is no general rule for human behavior and thinking.
From all facts, examples, and arguments I have shown that humans are neither rational
nor irrational. Furthermore, our behavior is not constantly somewhere in between this
spectrum of rationality. It could go all the way from the left end to the right. But
generally speaking, human is partially rational, which corresponds to its properties and
nature.
The most crucial concepts of rationality are its individualistic and holistic approaches.
They are entrenched in human nature because a human is a social being and should
always be a part of a community, in which people as a rule share common interests.
Those common interests are the glue for those two opposite approaches to rationality.
Often the whole community is organized in a way that treats individualistic aspirations
and links individualism and holism in a completely different dimension. This is a trick to
overrule their generally opposite characteristics.
As for the important branches of human society, i.e., politics, economics, ethics, ra-
tionality plays a crucial role because they appeared firsthand from this concept and thus
are very dependent on it. This is the reason for the existence of society as a concept.
Without the power of the human brain, its ability to reason, build casual relations, there
wouldn’t exist any order and Homo sapiens wouldn’t be any better than other animals
and probably would have died out as a species as their muscles are not oriented to survival
in the wild.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same
weapons of reason which today arm you against the present” – that’s Marcus Aurelius’
advice to humanity. This dictum worked for human society since the era of first commu-
nities and will work in the same manner when we will be conquering distant planets and
galaxies. Weapons of reason are our sacred gifts from nature, which will allow us not only
to turn mountains but to turn the whole planets if we desire.

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References
[1] Kant, Immanuel. Critique of pure reason. 1781. Modern Classical Philosophers,
Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin, pages 370–456, 1908.

[2] Merriam-Webster [online]. Definition of RATIONALITY. Data as of November

12, 2021.

[3] Proudfoot, Michael and Lacey, Alan Robert. The Routledge dictionary of
philosophy. Routledge, 2009.

[4] Arendt, Hannah. Philosophy and politics. Social research, pages 73–103, 1990.

[5] Tversky, Amos and Kahneman, Daniel. Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics
and biases. In Handbook of the Fundamentals of Financial Decision Making: Part I,
pages 261–268. World Scientific, 2013.

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