Is "rational self-interest" logically absurd?

[trenton]

I feel drawn to this because I noticed that the label "rational" is often used to give things more authority and confidence than should be warranted. I noticed this in "rational suicide" but it is a broad phenomenon. In the case of suicide, I believe it is fundamentally an emotional decision linked to a person's capacity to find meaning in suffering rather than at its core a logical consequentialist calculation. Here is an example of "rational suicide" although the problem with self-bias in rationality is much broader.

Imagine you were a Japanese soldier during WWII. You are very loyal to your country and will do anything to ensure victory. Your reasoning goes as follows.

1. I want Japan to win the war.

2. A Kamikaze strike would aid in achieving that goal.

3. Therefore I should carry out the strike

In this example, suicide is instrumentally rational in a similar manner to the terrorist attacks by ISIS. The problem with calling this rational is that it is extremely biased due to self-interest. Isn't self-interest inherently a deeply emotional bias rather than a rational one? There are people who might self-sacrifice for others or who might sacrifice for the greater good due to having a broader circle of concern. In the case of the Kamikaze fighter, any apparent rationality is based on an emotional desire that got tied up in a nationalist propaganda machine with many layers of untruth. Would it not be deeply irrational to believe in nationalist propaganda and to base one's self-interest off beliefs that were not critically examined?

The deeper issue I am sensing is that rationality is selectively applied as a consequence of self-interest which therefore biases the entire string of logic no matter how consistent it appears to be. Rationality in the context of self-interest appears to structurally exclude the bigger picture while mis categorizing emotional biases and agendas as though they were rational. I saw this happening with workplace studies as well. Employers were studying how rudeness and disrespect undermine employee productivity. They focused on employee interactions with customers while completely ignoring the role of the employer in terms of rudeness and disrespect that might undermine productivity due to low morale. From my point of view, the question of rudeness and disrespect should include the power imbalance between employer and employee which leads to dehumanization and a collapse of basic self-respect due to seeing oneself as fundamentally worthless. This is not accounted for in rudeness undermining workers because the agenda is biased toward corporate survival. This in turn obscures the full picture and therefore the reality of why employees become less productive. Nevertheless this kind of study passes as rational.

A common problem in how science is structured includes context stripping, possibly because the fundamental agenda in the pharmaceutical industry is profiteering over effective treatment which in turn biases how the studies are conducted and applied. The double blind placebo controlled studies demonstrate that the new pill improved about 90% of those studied, but then this get applied broadly across the entirely population even though the studies are set up with heavy filters to skew the results toward high effectiveness. In practice the outcome is that medicine is typically far less effective than advertised. Nevertheless psychiatrists think they are being rational when they use studies like these to justify a prescription. There seems to be no real interest in this industry in terms of closing the gap between theoretical studies and actual practice, which in turn corrupts the entire epistemic environment. It would be irrational to trust this environment, this context, this apparent authority, and these supposedly rigorous studies due to the heavy bias behind the apparent rationality which is ultimately a deeply emotional fear. In this sense science does not actually value rigor, but rather it values the appearance of rationality and rigor for the sake of aiding in authority, survival, and self-interest. The way science is practiced isn't actually rational in this sense.

It seems that rational self-interest is inherently divorced from truth as a consequence of the limited circle of concern. This includes examples such as mafia bosses, drug lords, and corporate criminals as being characterized as acting in rational self-interest despite the extreme harm they cause. It makes me question if they are really being rational or is their entire epistemic framework deeply irrational due to the corrupted relationship with truth? This is an important question because if rationality ultimately operates independently of truth, then why should it be believed? How can judgment be sound if it is fundamentally divorced from truth while using the label rational to obscure the emotional foundation of biased reasoning?

If this is the case that rational self-interest includes deep self-deception, then I might be able to construct a position for rational belief in the Bible. For example, I feel happy when I go to church and believe in the Bible. Therefore I should maintain the belief that the Bible is true out of rational self-interest. Self-interest is at it's core rationality that operates independently of truth. If this standard were applied consistently, then worshipping Jesus should be considered rational. If converting people aids in my rational self-interest, then that probably means that it is rational to argue that the Bible is true and that others should believe it. In this sense, does it mean that the fundamentalist Christian is being rational when he argues that Noah's Ark was real? Applying the standards of rational self-interest, maybe it is rational to believe in these things and to teach it to children.

Across all of these cases the term "rational" is commonly used to make something seem more certain, authoritative, and truthful than it actually is. The thing that bothers me therefore is what "rational belief" would mean in this context. If rational could be part of the self-deception, then what kind of real relationship does it have with truth? This is the contradiction in rationality in that it wants to claim truth as authoritative while being divorced from it. As we know from various spiritual sources we use on this site such as the book list, you cannot believe your way to truth in the sense that all of that is relative. Is it even possible for a belief to be fundamentally rational? How do you rationally believe a belief?

One distinction I came across was a belief versus an alief. The alief is the felt sense that something is true without needing intellectual justification. Given a felt sense that something is true operating independently of truth, this likely serves a mechanism for rationalization to make something appear more reasonable than it actually is.

Ultimately, rationality cannot be a label to indicate an ultimate truth. Rationality is more so an instrumental tool given a specific goal or objective while being limited to a specific context. Ultimate truth would require a bigger picture than rationality.

Is this a fair critique of self-bias in apparent rationality?