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The Rationality of the Arms Racers
Author(s) -
FLEW ANTONY
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
journal of applied philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.339
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5930
pISSN - 0264-3758
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00424.x
Subject(s) - irrationality , irrational number , rationality , epistemology , arms race , philosophy , positive economics , sociology , psychology , economics , mathematics , political economy , geometry
Against Peter Baehr's ‘The “irrationality” of the arms race’, published in Vol. 2 No. 2 of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, this paper argues that, at least directly and in the first instance, both rationality and irrationality characterise individual beliefs and individual behaviour. Furthermore it is fundamental to the understanding of persons that, before putting anyone down as in either respect irrational, we should first reconsider whether we were right, either in attributing to them beliefs which it would have been irrational for them to hold, or in assuming that their actual purposes and priorities were indeed such as to make their behaviour—by these standards—counterproductive. Once our present questions are approached in this way it becomes apparent that we have been given no sufficient reason for concluding that there is significantly more irrationality here than elsewhere. More than enough is too much.