what is rational?

Question

medical question

Answer 1

That's either a psychological question, or a philosophical one. Your question appears in the philosophy category here, but you said it's a medical question. I'm confused! The only way it's a medical question is if you ask a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist might prescribe you medication just for asking!

As a philosophical question, the short answer is that thinking is rational if it is structured in correspondence with the principles of critical thinking and logic. Also rational thought and language refer to reality. If they refer to nothing real, then they are not rational. This is pretty much the same as saying that language that does not refer to reality is meaningless.

Psychologists like to use the word to talk about human emotional responses, too. That's psychology. An emotional response that seems out of synch with reality is called an irrational one.

Here are somewhat correspondent terms, although each belongs to a different area of inquiry.

Meaningful
True
Rational
Real

Answer 2

Perhaps you are thinking of that special meaning for the word coherent. That meaning for the word coherent is, by way of example, investing a smaller amount to get a larger amount, whereas investing a larger amount for the smaller amount is incoherent; you are self determinately losing on your action.

There is also coherentism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence

'Coherentism
Coherentism denies the validity of the regression argument. The regression argument makes the assumption that the justification for a proposition takes the form of another proposition: P" justifies P', which in turn justifies P. For coherentism, justification is a holistic process. P is not justified as a part of some inferential chain of reasoning, but because it coheres with some system of which it forms a part. Usually the system is taken to be the complete set of beliefs of the individual or group, that is, their theory of the world.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherentism

In other words, my understanding from that, if a person has a notion which does not contradict the beliefs in the group, they are coherent, whereas contradiction may or may not be considered incoherent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherentism#Difficulties_for_coherentism
' Difficulties for coherentism
The main criticism facing coherentism, the isolation objection, is probably simplest to state from the point of view of someone who holds to the correspondence theory of truth. This states that there is no obvious way in which a coherent system relates to anything that might exist outside of it. So, it may be possible to construct a coherent theory of the world, which does not correspond to what actually occurs in the world. In other words, it appears to be entirely possible to develop a system that is entirely coherent and yet entirely untrue.'

Answer 3

not sure what you mean, there is a rational emotive behavior therapy, in which a rational /healthy response to a negative event would be to feel sorry, fustrated, disappointed, an irrational /unhealthy response would be to feel horrified, depressed, self-hating, self pityings