why I hate what many philosophers have to say about rationality
All too often, we find that learned philosophers exercise great ingenuity to establish what they in fact all be began by agreeing to: the belief that rationality is that virtue best exemplified by philosophers....
The concept of rationality that emerges from these discussions, accordingly, tends to be ethnocentric and chauvenist as well as overly complex and obscure, laden with metaphysical baggage... and extremely intellectualized, with an excessive emphasis on what is supposedly uniquely human....
Rationality, I want to argue, has been abused by philosophers. It has been obscured; ambiguities and equivocations have been plastered over...; and ever more stringent criteria have been applied to guarantee that, in the last analysis, no one could possibly qualify as a rational agent unless he or she had pursued at the minimum a baccalaureate, if not a Ph.D., in philosophy.
The criteria for rationality ought to be sought not in intelligence and ingenuity alone but in living well.... Rationality is caring about the right things.
-Robert Solomon, Existentialism, Emotions, and the Cultural Limits of Rationality
Also, a cute anecdote from that article:Someone once asked G.E.M. Anscombe, "What will philosophers do when they teach an ape to speak?"
G.E.M.A. replied, "They'll up the ante."