It's rational (in the sense death is a thing, and is coming), but it's not a natural healthy state, as people are wired to ignore it most of the time.
When they can't, it points to a psychological issue, that can be numbed with medication, sure, but even better if it's solved with counselling.
Else medication is a patch, but the problem is still there, the person is just numbed that they ignore it (which has its own issues, from addiction to the medication, to loss of certain functioning etc. Medication is a wide brush, it can't target "fear of death" alone with precision and leave all the rest of our functioning alone).
On the contrary, being overly rational is an unatural and harmful state.
"We'll die anyway, so why not just kill myself now" is perfectly rational too.
"I should cheat everybody, including my own parents, spouse, and kids, if it benefits me materially and it's 100% certain I can get away with it", is perfectly rational also.
And there are many more failure modes of rationality-only based function, a lot of which totally hurt the person doing the rational-only thinking - and literature on the matter, both scientific and philosophical.
Complete rationality in all things, all the time, would result in a broken functioning and even mental illness.
That's why emotions were evolutionarily developed. They are a great shortcut/heuristic to prioritize things necessary for functioning/survival without full information. It too has failure modes, but 100% rationality would be as damaging as 100% emotional decision making.
But the thoughts above are about rationality in general.
In this specific case, "Fear of death" as a frequent/constant thought (as opposed to something helpful to avoid an accident, or an ocassional reflection on mortality) is hardly rational.
It amounts to:
"Let's have a dehabilitating -to the point that I have it constantly and need medication- fear of something inevitable, that will impact the functioning and enjoying of my actual life for no productive reason at all, as I'm going to die eventually anyway. In fact it even take me to an early grave, the very thing I want to avoid, due to anxiety induced physiological issues".
Does that sound rational?
It sure isn't by any utilitarian measure of rationality.
Einstein said (or they attributed to him, but it's a good quote anyway) "“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".
Well, fearing death day after day, an act that will not change anything about the result, qualifies.
> "We'll die anyway, so why not just kill myself now" is perfectly rational too.
If living grants zero utility, then yeah. But 99.9% of people enjoy living, or expect to in the future, so for them it’s not logical at all.
> "I should cheat everybody, including my own parents, spouse, and kids, if it benefits me materially and it's 100% certain I can get away with it", is perfectly rational also.
But it’s an unrealistic, hypothetical situation, so we don’t really learn anything from it.
> And there are many more failure modes of rationality-only based function, a lot of which totally hurt the person doing the rational-only thinking - and literature on the matter, both scientific and philosophical.
Rationalism isn’t the same thing as being overly rational. Rationalism is based on irrational presuppositions, and thus is actually rather irrational.
> That's why emotions were evolutionarily developed.
>If living grants zero utility, then yeah. But 99.9% of people enjoy living, or expect to in the future, so for them it’s not logical at all.
Notice how you called it "not logical" based on utility here?
Well, fear of death (not the regular kind that's about avoiding risky/deathly situations, but the chronic anxiety for one's eventual demise, to the point one needs medication even), also has zero utility.
And yet your initial premise was about how logical it is, since people really do die and it's also 100% probable.
>But it’s an unrealistic, hypothetical situation, so we don’t really learn anything from it.
Nothing unrealistic about it. Some people go all in on it. And many many more go partially for it (narcissists, sociopaths, con men, and so on) And it's rational too - nothing illogical about it. But does it really befit a human being? Is being rational in this aspect the best path for someone? If not, perhaps rationality by itself is not the be all end all?
>Rationalism isn’t the same thing as being overly rational. Rationalism is based on irrational presuppositions, and thus is actually rather irrational.
Yes, you gotta start with some axioms that themselves are not derived "rationally", but that's not the point I'm making.
When we talk about rationality, we talk about the really existing impure rationality (a system based on logic plus some non-rationally-derived axioms/pressupositions).
That's the rationality you meant when you said "fear of death is rational", and that is what I meant when I said that being overly rational is a problem.
My point was that using rationality (with its pressupositions and everything, or even an imaginary "pure" one, if it was possible to exist) as your only tool. Rationality is not enough to cover the whole human experience and to guide our life and decisions.
In any case, the above just musings on rationality.
Let's get on the point of "fear of death" again: "fear of death", is not a rational behavior. Sure, it's a rational thing to be afraid of an activity with a high death risk if you want to live. But it's irrational to be held back in life by a persistent fear of one's eventual death.
One is caution. The other is a phobia - an anxiety disorder. It even has a name, thanatophobia, and is listed in the diagnostic manual for such disorders (DSM).
In fact, a key insight here is that fear is an emotion. As in "fear of death"...
Fear and rational avoidance are not the same thing. I drive thousands of miles without straying over the white lines because I know it is sensible, not because I am so fearful of them that I require constant medication. You don't need to live in fear to take right action. This is something you might learn in counselling for your fear.
If it is rational, that means it's beneficial, therefore not to be medicated away. Unless "rational" somehow includes "considering useless or counterproductive elements", and I would reject that.
However, I would not consider it to be terribly rational, it depends on the equation you're solving. If you're a single mother of 5 little ones, you will fear for their survival. If you're a soldier, well, your inability to face death may get many others killed.
I don’t think it’s rational. It’s natural and engrained in your monkey brain, and then your rational brain says “I’m rational and I fear it therefore it must be rational to fear it”.
