The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 9, 2006

Philosophical Anthropology

Are Impossible Goals Rational?

I argue contra Larry Laudan and Robert Nozick that valuable goals that are impossible (i.e., ideal goals) can be rational, if they are approachable without a known limit. It is argued that Laudan proscribes as irrational impossible goals because he holds a confused scheme for means/ends rationality. Moreover it is argued that it is counterintuitive to hold ideal goals to be irrational. On the other hand I argue that Nozick's generalization of utility theory so as to admit symbolic utilities will allow the characterization of ideal goals as rational.