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The Collaborative International Dictionary
irrationality

irrationality \ir*ra`tion*al"i*ty\, n. The quality or state of being irrational; absence of rationality. ``Brutish irrationaliity.''
--South.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
irrationality

1560s, from irrational + -ity.

Wiktionary
irrationality

n. 1 The quality or state of being irrational; want of the faculty or the quality of reason; fatuity. 2 Something which is irrational or brought forth by irrational action, judgement, idea or thought.

WordNet
irrationality

n. the state of being irrational; lacking powers of understanding [syn: unreason]

Wikipedia
Irrationality

Irrationality is cognition, thinking, talking or acting without inclusion of rationality. It is more specifically described as an action or opinion given through inadequate use of reason, emotional distress, or cognitive deficiency. The term is used, usually pejoratively, to describe thinking and actions that are, or appear to be, less useful, or more illogical than other more rational alternatives.

Irrational behaviors of individuals include taking offense or becoming angry about a situation that has not yet occurred, expressing emotions exaggeratedly (such as crying hysterically), maintaining unrealistic expectations, engaging in irresponsible conduct such as problem intoxication, disorganization, or extravagance, and falling victim to confidence tricks. People with a mental illness like schizophrenia may exhibit irrational paranoia.

These more contemporary "normative conceptions" of what constitutes a manifestation of irrationality are difficult to demonstrate empirically because it is not clear by whose standards we are to judge the behavior rational or irrational. Irrationality, historically speaking, is an outcome of the ancient Greek separation of rationality (logos) from emotion and sensuality as the sources of "false" assumptions and statements.

Usage examples of "irrationality".

He raised his hand wearily: if I would not do him the service of assassinating Perseus, at least I might leave the Queen her delusions: fact was, she did show signs of being a couple months gone again, by himself or whomever, and that condition, which given her age et cetera might as possibly be menopause, perhaps accounted for her late irrationality.

Pete, I feel sure, were becoming convinced that humoring me along on a seemingly meritless adventure might only prolong my illness and bouts of irrationality.

Others, perhaps seized by the irrationality that could take men in battle, dropped their lances and tried to uncase their own horse-bows.

Out there, they had faced, and been distorted by, their own inner demons, their own fears and frustrations and neuroses and psychoses, but this irrationality gave them great power.

He was shaking his head vigorously as if to unclog it of the irrationality of her words.

But for now the fins swam along a knife edge, where irrationality was a perpetual danger.

Nobody on board is religious in the way that term once had been understood, but the long months of isolation aboard the starship, perhaps, may have conjured a streak of irrationality in some of the voyagers, and of fierce playfulness in others.

At one of their con­ferences, which took place in the Soviet embassy in Vienna, a person from your Bioenergetics Institute named Simonov exerted coercive and mind-altering force upon the American President, throwing him into a state of confusion and irrationality that still persists.

We have lots of words for human-mind bugsparanoias, catatonias, phobias, neuroses, irrationalities.

But whenever a procedure is codified, the more delicate spirit of it evaporates, and if we wish the undiluted ascetic spirit,—the passion of self-contempt wreaking itself on the poor flesh, the divine irrationality of devotion making a sacrificial gift of all it has (its sensibilities, namely) to the object of its adoration,—we must go to autobiographies, or other individual documents.

What would be accepted as evidence, if not disease, madness, misery, irrationality, frustration, criminality and sickness, that a tragic disparateness now exists between the needs of human beings and the imperatives of society.

Even Ripon, who was not more than a year or so older than herself, could marshal all the facts and make a judgement about them, but not even Domdaniel could grasp the irrationalities of the situation.

As a working environment, the rest of academia is a sewer of irrationality, hatemongering, envy, and self-interest.

He cried out, and felt the dusei warm against him, their solid comfort, the mad irrationalities of their uncomprehending minds.

In the process, many of the prejudices and irrationalities that had underlain the strife of ages at last withered or were swept away.