RJS

Excuse the interruption, but isn't there a difference between having evidence against something and believing, and having no evidence against something and believing.

xeren

you're right, there is a difference, but it's not really important to this discussion, thanks though.

Changing it to THIS makes no difference in my argument:

Keith, you said it yourself, a rational person cannot choose to believe something against the <strong>(lack of) </strong>evidence he has come upon, without becoming irrational.

Therefore: A rational person, in order to stay rational, cannot choose to believe something they do not have evidence for.

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: xeren ]</p>

Keith Russell

xeren:

Thanks for your response. You and I are arguing semantics at this point, but we agree on the concepts invovled.

Keith.

Rusting Car Bumper

This depends on what counts as evidence. Does someone saying, "I don't think the world could operate like it does if X was not true" count as evidence?

Even if you consider evidence to mean physical evidence, this is not rationality. This is empircism or something akin to it. Rationality, as far as I can see, doesn't require physical or empirical evidence. Rationality seems to conern the consistency of ideas rather than their content.

When I say, "as far as I can see" I mean when I look up "reason, rational and rationality" in a dictionary.

This seems a general problem with Randian type "thinking" as Randians seem to allow only a certain type of rationality.

DC