The Uses of Delusion: Why It's Not Always Rational to Be Rational

ISBN-13: 9780190079857 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022 / 216 str.

Stuart Vyse

Recenzje

Those of us who have devoted our careers to promoting science, reason, and rationality rarely consider the times and circumstances when it is rational to be irrational, reasonable to be unreasonable, and even use science to determine when it is appropriate to be unscientific in our lives. In The Uses of Delusion our nation's foremost expert on superstition and magical thinking turns his rational eye to revealing the context of this apparently paradoxical behavior. I actually felt a sense of relief in understanding why I need not berate myself for the many times I have caught myself being unreasonable, irrational, and unscientific in my life, because as Stuart Vyse shows in this important contribution to the science of rationality, there are times when it pays to be irrational.

O autorze

Stuart Vyse, PhD, is a behavioral scientist, teacher, and writer. He taught at Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, and Connecticut College. Vyse's book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the 1999 William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. He is a contributing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, where he writes the "Behavior & Belief" column, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.