Slote, Michael - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

98 <strong>The</strong> <strong>Tanner</strong> <strong>Lectures</strong> on Human Values
tion that either sort of individual is essentially more rational. Even
if the exercise of moderation in our sense involves choosing somewhere
between extremes, some level that counts as good enough
short of the best possible, it should not be concluded that our
sense of what is good enough involves the perception of what
level of good is uniquely dictated by reason. It may involve a
sense of what is good enough that cannot be codified by principles
and that may thus require something naturally called perception,
and, like Aristotle’s notion, it may involve essential variability
from individual to individual and from situation to situation; but
it will be different from the perception Aristotle requires for
temperance in being focused specifically on what is good enough
and fine rather than on what it is right or rational for an individual
to choose. Thus for Aristotle what is admirable about moderation
is that it is a unique exercise and expression of rationality, but
the present view bases its high regard for moderation on its characteristic
lack of constraint and its characteristic self-sufficiency,
although it has been essential to the view presented that there at
least be nothing irrational in what we ordinarily call moderation.
We began these lectures by considering whether philosophers,
economists, game-theorists, and others may not traditionally have
had too narrow a conception of rational choice and action. I
attempted to argue that satisficing (both in forms familiar to
economists and in forms that go well beyond what the economists
have been willing to allow) is in fact a prevalent, even a pervasive,
phenomenon of human life; but I attempted to argue that
such satisficing should not be considered a form of human irrationality,
but rather an exception, a widespread exception, to the
received view that practical rationality involves some sort of optimization.
Certainly there are many egregious, and frightening,
examples of pervasive human irrationality to be cited, but it seems
to me, and I have argued, that in the present instance the accusation
of irrationality does not fit; what must be adjusted, rather, is
our antecedent theoretical notions about what rationality is.