What is rational?

Famous quotes containing the word rational:

    To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states exhibiting what Brentano and others call intentionality.
    Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)

    I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses ... it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.
    Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)