Fiery Cushman's account of the rationality of rationalization is both surprising (because it contradicts the folk wisdom that rationalization is paradigmatically irrational) and unifying (because it offers an evolutionary story for the emergence of rationalization and situates rationalization in the broader theoretical framework of “representational exchange”). However, in highlighting the potential adaptive benefits of being an organism that rationalizes, Cushman downplays rationalization's signature liability: It exposes a person to the hazards of delusion and self-sabotage.
Cushman presupposes that rationalization always happens after action. But the ambit of rationalization is wider. Decisions not to act are also rationalized. In addition, rationalization can be anticipatory, clearing away hurdles of caution and of conscience. “Pre-violation” rationalization serves to defuse an anticipated threat to the moral self, allowing people to do wrong while feeling righteous (Shalvi et al. Reference Shalvi, Gino, Barkan and Ayal2015). This kind of rationalization is more difficult to square with Cushman's account of the rationality of rationalization, because it puts into focus desires whose satisfaction subjects know or suspect to be self-undermining or morally dubious.
Consider the case of a scientist who refuses to adjust the course of her research program despite the urging of her peers who that worry it is fundamentally unsound. Since it is more pleasant to inhabit the fantasy world where she is a misunderstood genius than the real world where she is an ordinary thinker with a lot of work ahead of her, she may rationalize her intransigence by concocting a story about the inability of her peers to comprehend her profoundly original ideas. Or consider the man who lies to his wife about his ballooning credit card debt. He may rationalize his dishonesty by telling himself that disclosure and transparency would cause his partner unbearable anxiety. These workaday examples conform to the basic pattern of Cushman's account: First, the subject makes a decision or performs an action, then “concocts the beliefs or desires that would have made it rational.” (target article, sect. 1.1, para. 1) Although rationalizers don't have unfettered freedom to concoct whatever they want (they must work with the evidence at hand), rationalization is nonetheless an essentially creative endeavor (D'Cruz Reference D'Cruz2015).
Subjects will sometimes manifest awareness of their concoctions as such. As a result, raising the stakes may induce a person to abandon their rationalizing postures when their most cherished aims are threatened (Gendler Reference Gendler2007, p. 244). A looming tenure case might bring the scientist to take her colleagues’ criticism more seriously; the specter of a separation might bring the husband to appreciate the moral weight of duplicity.
However, as Cushman notes, in many other cases “people don't just tell a story, they actually make themselves believe it” (sect. 1.1, para. 4) In such cases, rationalizers’ concoctions get added to their stock of beliefs. Ramsey (Reference Ramsey1931) famously characterized belief as a map by which we steer. The liability of rationalization is that inaccuracy introduced into the map undermines a person's ability to plan intelligently, or as Cushman puts it, “to discover or estimate the instrumental value of various actions” (target article, sect. 3.6.2, para. 2) The deluded scientist may stick to her guns even when her career is threatened; the deluded husband may fail to reckon with his moral failings even when his cherished relationship hangs in the balance. These individuals are self-sabotaging not simply because they fall short of some putatively objective standard of theoretical rationality; they are irrational in the basic sense that their actions fail to realize the satisfaction of their own desires and the realization of their own goals. As Cushman puts it, in these cases rationalization “takes take a clear error of reasoning and then multiplies it, infecting thought with a pathology of choice” (sect. 2.1, para. 7)
Cushman explicitly concedes that rationalization “will be occasionally be maladaptive.” (3) However, he insists that “on average, over time, it pays” (sect 1.1, para. 10). The postulate that on average rationalization “pays” is surely an empirical conjecture. The vindication of such a conjecture depends on the extent to which rationalization plays the “information exchange” role, extracting largely accurate information from adaptive but non-rational processes, and the extent to which rationalization subverts goal-directed activity by constructing a wishful map of the world in lieu of an accurate one. A further possibility is that rationalization is irrational (insofar as it subverts agency) yet adaptive (insofar as it improves fitness).
We might taxonomize rationalization into (1) information-extraction rationalization, which takes (adaptive) instinct, conformity to norms, and habit as its input, and (2) reality-distorting rationalization, which takes wishful thinking as its input. We would then want to know how these two types of rationalization are related to each other and whether they are realized by the same mental processes. We would also want to know whether an individual's susceptibility to the reality-distorting species of rationalization is accompanied by a heightened capacity for the information-extraction species, and also whether efforts to avoid reality-distorting rationalization have costs in terms of the fitness advantage conferred by information exchange. Clear thinking and moral integrity require that we be vigilant about debunking stories that serve to justify bad decisions and actions. (Honest friends play a central role in this.) How are we to think about the value of such vigilance in the light of Cushman's central thesis?
Fiery Cushman's account of the rationality of rationalization is both surprising (because it contradicts the folk wisdom that rationalization is paradigmatically irrational) and unifying (because it offers an evolutionary story for the emergence of rationalization and situates rationalization in the broader theoretical framework of “representational exchange”). However, in highlighting the potential adaptive benefits of being an organism that rationalizes, Cushman downplays rationalization's signature liability: It exposes a person to the hazards of delusion and self-sabotage.
Cushman presupposes that rationalization always happens after action. But the ambit of rationalization is wider. Decisions not to act are also rationalized. In addition, rationalization can be anticipatory, clearing away hurdles of caution and of conscience. “Pre-violation” rationalization serves to defuse an anticipated threat to the moral self, allowing people to do wrong while feeling righteous (Shalvi et al. Reference Shalvi, Gino, Barkan and Ayal2015). This kind of rationalization is more difficult to square with Cushman's account of the rationality of rationalization, because it puts into focus desires whose satisfaction subjects know or suspect to be self-undermining or morally dubious.
Consider the case of a scientist who refuses to adjust the course of her research program despite the urging of her peers who that worry it is fundamentally unsound. Since it is more pleasant to inhabit the fantasy world where she is a misunderstood genius than the real world where she is an ordinary thinker with a lot of work ahead of her, she may rationalize her intransigence by concocting a story about the inability of her peers to comprehend her profoundly original ideas. Or consider the man who lies to his wife about his ballooning credit card debt. He may rationalize his dishonesty by telling himself that disclosure and transparency would cause his partner unbearable anxiety. These workaday examples conform to the basic pattern of Cushman's account: First, the subject makes a decision or performs an action, then “concocts the beliefs or desires that would have made it rational.” (target article, sect. 1.1, para. 1) Although rationalizers don't have unfettered freedom to concoct whatever they want (they must work with the evidence at hand), rationalization is nonetheless an essentially creative endeavor (D'Cruz Reference D'Cruz2015).
Subjects will sometimes manifest awareness of their concoctions as such. As a result, raising the stakes may induce a person to abandon their rationalizing postures when their most cherished aims are threatened (Gendler Reference Gendler2007, p. 244). A looming tenure case might bring the scientist to take her colleagues’ criticism more seriously; the specter of a separation might bring the husband to appreciate the moral weight of duplicity.
However, as Cushman notes, in many other cases “people don't just tell a story, they actually make themselves believe it” (sect. 1.1, para. 4) In such cases, rationalizers’ concoctions get added to their stock of beliefs. Ramsey (Reference Ramsey1931) famously characterized belief as a map by which we steer. The liability of rationalization is that inaccuracy introduced into the map undermines a person's ability to plan intelligently, or as Cushman puts it, “to discover or estimate the instrumental value of various actions” (target article, sect. 3.6.2, para. 2) The deluded scientist may stick to her guns even when her career is threatened; the deluded husband may fail to reckon with his moral failings even when his cherished relationship hangs in the balance. These individuals are self-sabotaging not simply because they fall short of some putatively objective standard of theoretical rationality; they are irrational in the basic sense that their actions fail to realize the satisfaction of their own desires and the realization of their own goals. As Cushman puts it, in these cases rationalization “takes take a clear error of reasoning and then multiplies it, infecting thought with a pathology of choice” (sect. 2.1, para. 7)
Cushman explicitly concedes that rationalization “will be occasionally be maladaptive.” (3) However, he insists that “on average, over time, it pays” (sect 1.1, para. 10). The postulate that on average rationalization “pays” is surely an empirical conjecture. The vindication of such a conjecture depends on the extent to which rationalization plays the “information exchange” role, extracting largely accurate information from adaptive but non-rational processes, and the extent to which rationalization subverts goal-directed activity by constructing a wishful map of the world in lieu of an accurate one. A further possibility is that rationalization is irrational (insofar as it subverts agency) yet adaptive (insofar as it improves fitness).
We might taxonomize rationalization into (1) information-extraction rationalization, which takes (adaptive) instinct, conformity to norms, and habit as its input, and (2) reality-distorting rationalization, which takes wishful thinking as its input. We would then want to know how these two types of rationalization are related to each other and whether they are realized by the same mental processes. We would also want to know whether an individual's susceptibility to the reality-distorting species of rationalization is accompanied by a heightened capacity for the information-extraction species, and also whether efforts to avoid reality-distorting rationalization have costs in terms of the fitness advantage conferred by information exchange. Clear thinking and moral integrity require that we be vigilant about debunking stories that serve to justify bad decisions and actions. (Honest friends play a central role in this.) How are we to think about the value of such vigilance in the light of Cushman's central thesis?