Well, I’m not a psychologist, but if someone asked me to name a pathology marked by unusual egocentric bias I’d point to NPD, not sociopathy.
That brings up some interesting questions concerning how we define rationality, though. Pathologies in psychology are defined in terms of interference with daily life, and the personality disorder spectrum in particular usually implies problems interacting with people or societies. That could imply either irreconcilable values or specific flaws in reasoning, but only the latter is irrational in the sense we usually use around here. Unfortunately, people are cognitively messy enough that the two are pretty hard to distinguish, particularly since so many human goals involve interaction with other people.
In any case, this might be a good time to taboo “rational”.
Well, I’m not a psychologist, but if someone asked me to name a pathology marked by unusual egocentric bias I’d point to NPD, not sociopathy.
That brings up some interesting questions concerning how we define rationality, though. Pathologies in psychology are defined in terms of interference with daily life, and the personality disorder spectrum in particular usually implies problems interacting with people or societies. That could imply either irreconcilable values or specific flaws in reasoning, but only the latter is irrational in the sense we usually use around here. Unfortunately, people are cognitively messy enough that the two are pretty hard to distinguish, particularly since so many human goals involve interaction with other people.
In any case, this might be a good time to taboo “rational”.