>Fundamental goals are neither rational nor irrational.
That's a rather controversial statement. You have to bear in mind that the very idea that there's a clean split between issues of fact and issues of "values" or "goals" is a very controversial one. Hillary Putnam's book on this issue is a great read ("The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy").
Of course, there are also issues with the notion of "observation" used in Bayesian statistics. Since any observation which isn't actually just a direct report of a sense experience (e.g. "I see red in the top left corner of my visual field") involves the application of some theory, it's not clear what should count as an observation for a rational agent or group of rational agents. For example, did John observe that a car drove past? Or did he observe that something which looks like a car drove past? Can John observe that Bill was being petulant, or is that a value judgment? Did John observe that the current is 0.5A? Or did he observe that the ammeter reported that the current is 0.5A? Etc. etc.
The Bayesian framework is an idealization, resting on an ideal notion of "observation". I personally think that it's crazy to take this framework to be a model for rationality itself. We are not able to make observations in the Bayesian sense.
That's a rather controversial statement. You have to bear in mind that the very idea that there's a clean split between issues of fact and issues of "values" or "goals" is a very controversial one. Hillary Putnam's book on this issue is a great read ("The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy").
Of course, there are also issues with the notion of "observation" used in Bayesian statistics. Since any observation which isn't actually just a direct report of a sense experience (e.g. "I see red in the top left corner of my visual field") involves the application of some theory, it's not clear what should count as an observation for a rational agent or group of rational agents. For example, did John observe that a car drove past? Or did he observe that something which looks like a car drove past? Can John observe that Bill was being petulant, or is that a value judgment? Did John observe that the current is 0.5A? Or did he observe that the ammeter reported that the current is 0.5A? Etc. etc.
The Bayesian framework is an idealization, resting on an ideal notion of "observation". I personally think that it's crazy to take this framework to be a model for rationality itself. We are not able to make observations in the Bayesian sense.