The Contingency of Sanity

[perezoso]

....rational behavior is neither necessary nor sufficient for sane behavior.

This is a common countercultural dream, but really quite ludicrous if you think about it. Suppose yr Aunty is ill. Physically. You , having limited medical techniques, are not sure what the ailment is. The sane thing and the rational thing--and really the necessary action-- is to take Aunty to the doctor, to one competent enough to assess her ailments. If you refused to take her in, you would be acting irrationally and in a sense insanely to some degree, if her ailment was severe. To do the right thing, and the necessary act in that context, means to act rationally and take her to the specialist. IT may not be suffciently rational and sane: perhaps you have to go to many doctors, if she had a mystery illness. Not to do so is irrational, and yes counter to most ideas of sanity.

So within certain contexts--medical, legal, political, scientific--- certain rational actions are required, and indeed some actions would be defined as necessary and sufficient were we asked to define the proper action in that context. Most human actions are goal driven-- one has to know the proper procedures to perform for reaching a goal or desired end. The guys in France who just finished that monumental bridge did not just design it like some painting, without knowing the load bearing qualities of the materials and the right equations given the dimensions and so forth. Within that context very specific and rational actions were required, were they not. I tend to think human interactions could be much more procedure oriented and logical even if that seems cold or not hip.

[e_dog]

i agree that a high degree of controlled, precisely directed rationality was necessary to construct monumental bridges. but it might be quite insane to build a given bridge in the first place. (don't know enough about the French case). for example, the designers of the World trade center Towers displayed rationality in designing it, maybe they could have been "more" rational and avoided certain structural problems and susceptibilities, but the very project itself of building such a gigantic structure in a populated urban area is truly insane.

i think you are right, in some contexts, behvaior X is both rationally required and not to perform would be insane. (not sure that the aunty example is one of these, since i don't think that say Cristian Scientists are per se insane or alternative medicine types.) not to get out of the way of an oncoming car that you see and have time to react to is insane (even if temporarily).

probably irrational.

all i mean is that it is not the case that every insistence of 'X is rational' implies 'X is sane' (or the grammatically appropriate equivalent). Wittgenstein was a very rational fellow, and probably a bit insane (or at least emotionally unstable). Nietzsche had a rational accumen that is almost unparalleled, well at times, (even though he is to some extent also an irrationalist) but he went fuckin insane.

construction of atomic bomb: rational and insane.

going to war rather than jail: rational and insane.

[STUPID BOB]

The whole insanity/rational debate is a bit odd in the best light. Serious examples to person A are a laffer to person B. Sanity throughout history has been determined by the powers that be (or were). I can do without standards by commitee on this small nub of life. Anything that takes a convention is suspect to me.

While I agree that there can be positions identified by both camps, I question the delivery of goods from both.

To pharaphrase LR, Sanity is what you feel good after . . . hey, hey.