Course Description

Instructor: Dennis Martin

“What’s wrong with all those irrational people?” If you’ve had that thought, then you likely believe that being rational makes sense and that you are rational, or at least strive to be. What’s happened to other people? This course will examine the concepts, history, and scientific investigation of rationality and non-rationality. Non-rationality can vary from madness to irrational media punditry, from advertising tricks to unconscious errors made by scientists. This course will examine the limits to rationality that have been disclosed in such fields as logic, sociology, psychology, economics, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. Can we define and achieve what it is to be rational? When is it okay not to be rational?