Conversations: with Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University
John Anderson: Conversations
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The Importance of Rationality
Rationality is the use of knowledge to attain a goal and it is relative to the goal. There's nothing no act is rational or irrational by itself excepting so far as it either figures that a way to get into the goal or not. As long as you're a social creature and your well-being depends on others, then and you have to get buy-in from other people, then you've got to have a goal that is not just selfish but that everyone can share. Once you start taking everyone's interest into account, all the potential participants in this conversation, then it pushes you towards goals that are inherently moral. That's why if you look at definitions of morality over
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