« Back to Rationality in Practice

RATIONAL EXPECTATION

---

What to rationally expect from oneself and one’s capacity for reason? Such expectations help decide the standards of what is rational and moral as opposed to what is irrational and immoral. Irrational expectations lead to standards that turn you away from rationality and morality in some way. For example, an irrational expectation in the pursuit of some long-range goal would be to expect your willpower to be the only relevant internal factor in driving you toward that goal, even though willpower, while necessary, is not sufficient, i.e. it is only one of the essential internal factors. Irrational expectations lead to non-objectivity, leading to a degraded sense of truth and value, e.g. suffering, feeling of inefficacy as in shame or despair, undue guilt or regret, etc.