**3.1 Rationale**

Rationale refers to controlling principles of opinion, belief, practice, or phenomena. To be rational refers to having reason or understanding, or to something being agreeable to reason. Controlling principles are not perforce agreeable to reason as they may be structural and unintended outcomes of very complicated social processes. Nobody can escape being bound to some sort of overall principles of action, but few can claim to act rationally in every instance.

Dr. Pangloss is a stunning character in Voltaire's novel Candide, published in 1759 [4]. Voltaire (1694–1778) is thought to have used the character for ridiculing Leibnizian optimism. Nonetheless, Dr. Pangloss certainly makes sense as a representative of the breaking times when the traditional teleological world view - the purposefulness of everything - had to confront a causal world view, based on science. But Dr. Pangloss is more than a caricature of naïve optimism, he mirrors an existential dilemma as well.

According to the doctor, "all is for the best", because we live in "the best of all possible worlds". God is the ultimate good so why would not his creation be the best as well? Thus, it is reasonable to claim that everything that occurs is for the best. Dr. Pangloss firmly professed causality within an overall scheme of teleology, thereby reflecting a view of God as the Creator, not as the Intervener. At the time, the existence of God was not questioned, but his nature was.

A problem with Pangloss' ethical position is that everything turns out both acceptable and obligatory, in accordance with the initial ruling of the Creator. It is not Pangloss' fatalism that gives rise to moral doubts, but his opportunism. Actually, his character may be seen as an embodiment of alleged Jesuitical sentiments: End justifies means! If the initial creation is the best of all worlds, then every derivative of that creation, good and bad, is for the eventual good. Only human shortsightedness would blur that post-factum.

As final explanations, the concepts of cause and purpose may appear to us mutually exclusive. But, if we define the purpose of our universe to be causal, there is no contradiction. If the purpose of the universe is defined not to be causal, a contradiction arises. Consequently, to be considered rational we have to avoid thinking and acting in a way that would offend the rationale of our basic guiding principles, whether religious, atheistic or agnostic. Human characters who possess the quality of not being self-contradictory, are thought to have integrity.

We may face another problem as well: What are those entities that generate controlling principles of opinion, belief and practice? Dr. Pangloss was a character of a firmly Christian country of Christian Europe. In a hierarchical manner, any entity can of course be thought of as being part of a greater totality. The Christian solution is to close the hierarchy by referring to this world, the Creation, as the target of human reasoning. The Heaven or Paradise are per definition out of reach, and conceivable only as part of eternity, and so are our understanding of the deeds of the Lord. Any endeavor to bridge the gap may provide ample room for speculation, accompanied by a never-ending stream of self-promoting prophets and wizards.

The Christian world view is by no means unique, rather the contrary. Most of us seek - consciously or unconsciously - to build our identities based on some kind of view of a world that we can and want to live with. Are we free to choose? The gospel of the modern world is: Yes! In reality, experience transmits a more complicated story. Only madmen are able to extrapolate their madness into the big world. The sane ones must go the other way around. Societies and cultures provide rationales, the task of individuals and single ventures is to provide matching thoughts and deeds.

#### **3.2 Rationality**

In his Utopia, Thomas More (1478–1535) sought to find a rational, explicit and measurable expression for the rationale of Christian society [5]. He was decapitated by his King, Henry VIII, who usurped the religious power of the Pope, and robbed the Catholic Church of its wealth. Maybe the modern world was born in 1535 CE? What are the fundaments of our modern world? Heaven got lost because eternity got lost. Now, our haven (short of the e) is located in this world, but in the future. Remarkably, the end was changed, but the idea of Christian eschatology is still there.

The first to make the switch were the people of the Renaissance. They started to look ahead by looking back. Nonetheless, they applied a conception of time that was linear, albeit opposite to ours. The great discoveries of the early modern time brought about global trade, and in its wake, colonial subjugation, looting and plunder of the Americas, Africa and the East. Economic wealth in Europe brought about a surplus that was reinvested for the sake of further surplus. The future in this world was eventually found.

The corporate form of capitalism that emerged during the 17th century, indicates a rationality narrowed down to optimizing the revenues of single ventures [6]. Over time, some part of the aggregated surpluses has been invested in political ventures labelled charity, corruption or money laundry according to prevailing conjuncture. Concentration of wealth caused by necessity the need for controlling politics, which is now equally obvious in democratic and nondemocratic countries.

During the Renaissance, Antiquity was thought to represent the ultimate achievements of mankind. Social progress is an idea of the 17th century, but the concern was limited to the economy [7]. Towards the turn of the century, a debate in the French Academy between the "Moderns" and the "Antiques" reflected a broader understanding. The issue at stake was the very essence of change: Is all change for the better? After decades, a reasonable conclusion was reached: Quantifiable knowledge can be accumulated, like mathematics and science. Knowledge involving judgement like questions regarding moral and beauty, are skills that individuals acquire, and the knowledge of those cannot be accumulated [8]. There is an endless growth of applicable criteria for making judgement, but that does not indicate improved quality of factual judgements.

Only the Enlightenment of the 18th century, with Voltaire and others, brought to the fore a notion of overall progress, and Dr. Pangloss became a ridiculed figure [9]. He was stuck to the eternal heaven, not the haven of the future. During the heydays of the Enlightenment, progress turned limitless as well as endless, and a purpose in itself. Consequently, the 19th century brought with it progress and regress as ideological and political concepts. In the 20th century, when progress was boiled down to economic growth as indicated by GNP, every economy of the globe could be integrated into a common ranking list with regard to overall output per year and person.

The eventual point of reference is the future of this world. Nevertheless, like the gospel, the future is unverifiable. But it is an offer one cannot refuse as there is nothing to lose, only to gain - except for infidels refusing to give up their integrity. There is a difference between eternity and the future in that the future is even more abstract than eternity. As the case of More shows, his utopia was firmly anchored in Christian ethic. Considering history, it is hard to discern how our future, being a battleground for ideologies and countries of all shadings, has anything to do with particular moral sentiments or ethical considerations.

However, even the haven of future may have an end. When most aspects of human life are increasingly bound up to external order and control, the prospects

#### *A Panglossian Dilemma DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95944*

of single individuals are narrowed down. Now, the wealthiest 10 percent of the global population owns 81.7 percent of global wealth, and the wealthiest 1.0 percent have 45 percent [10, 11]. What happens when 0.1 percent of the global population will own everything? The future could then be not to gaze into the future, but to return to the initial state of human history of here and now. Carpe Diem, catch the day!

The nucleus of wealth accumulation is now finance. The value of money, when being a commodity exchanged on a market, is subjected to fluctuations determined by supply over demand. With concurrent fiat money, the logic changes insofar as investments do not by necessity concern productive measures at all. Finance becomes a club good. By the financial transactions of the biggest players, the value of existing wealth can be manipulated for the sake of more wealth. When the total amount of indebtedness grows faster than productive output, a further concentration of wealth to the club members seems inevitable. A recent estimate suggests a global debt burden of 272 trillion USD, that is 365 percent of total GDP [12].

Rationality seeks its rationale among available possibilities. In the various phases of human development, options at hand may have increased in absolute terms, but they may decrease further in relative terms. The employed criteria of judgement may still expand and improve over time when based on expanding sets of data. The quality of judgement is up to prudence. Individuals are prudent, not nations, and judgement skills can be improved only during a lifetime.

## **3.3 Moral choice**

For half a millennium, European science has been developed to encompass most aspects of life, but still there seems to be no theoretical consensus on judgement. In order to make a judgement, one needs criteria, but to figure out criteria, one needs to make judgements. The idea of "value" is self-referential. To evaluate, we need to evaluate and choose applicable criteria, in absurdum [13]. All of us have to make choices, no matter how informed we are. Most choices are moral ones and based on considerations about right or wrong. Moral considerations are not always manifest, but unavoidable and omnipresent.

The Sisyphus-work of redesigning morality is manifest in the ways scientists and philosophers have tried to grip the task. The initial phase was filled with optimism. The grand utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham (1747–1832) aspired in vain to elaborate a felicific calculus, but it would not have included "natural and imprescriptible rights", which he considered "nonsense upon stilts" [14]. His position is rational as utilitarianism was embedded in the economy and politics of his time. The recognition of human rights would certainly have been obtrusive as human labor was supposed to be a commodity of the marketplace.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) expressed the idea that the rules of thumb of everyday morality would get endorsed by the systematic utilitarian method, but such derivations are still on their way. The futility of expecting a feasible algorithm of moral values for global cost–benefit analysis is as obvious as ever before. Utilitarian calculations face many problems. Considering positive effects as benefits seems to be obvious, but what about negative effects? In the short run they are costs, but in a longer perspective they may turn out to be beneficial. By switching the perspective, short term positive effects may later on turn out to be negative.

In all, to judge and weight all moral consequences in terms of benefits and drawbacks is impossible. Moreover, even to weight practical results in terms of benefits and drawbacks is impossible, except for limiting the scope to a short period of time and a narrow place. This means utilitarianism reflects a rationality that is conceivable only within the clearly defined limits of single projects.

#### *IoT Applications Computing*

The Kantian tradition - stressing principles of conduct - has likewise paid tribute to practicality, and resented the impracticality of utilitarianists. The maxims, such as the Categorical Imperative, are open in a similar way as the utilitarian endeavor for benefits. They require an actor to consider and select relevant maxims to match actions or to select relevant actions to match maxims. A truly thoughtful person may not be able to take any actions at all as uncertainty is our companion.

A somewhat sloppy conclusion would be that sincere moral thinking requires understanding, knowledge and imagination, which is not achieved by applying formulae. The complexity of real-world problems is impossible to compute. We can never consider all things, or all times for that matter. In practice, capitalism, and to some extent representative democracy, mostly set a time front that is as long as an investment period or political tenure. Those may be optimized. The positive and direct effects, and alleged positive externalities, are annealed while negative externalities are easily unrecognized or silenced.

Is there a single point of departure, one perspective from where to assess ideal rationality? The traditional answer is yes, common interest. In practice, hardly any political party would miss to refer to public or common interest. The idea of a common interest is illustrated by the Prisoner's Dilemma [15]. To optimize his situation, the rationally acting suspect would judge his fellow suspects and probably find out that some of them are somewhat irrational, and therefore unreliable. The shortsighted self-interest of some accused would obstruct the possibility to find an optimal solution, common for all. Consequently, the ideally rational player would have to turn less rational, not to lose too much. Is that rational? Nonetheless, it seems to be part and parcel of politics, rhetoric and modern life.

#### **3.4 Accumulation of knowledge**

Scientific institutions worldwide try to safeguard the academic virtues in order to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge [16, 17]. This can be seen as a moral prerogative for science and its global body of researchers. It is also an example of the match between the rationale of science and the rationality of academia. The academic routines include dissertation and publishing of findings, peer reviewing and critical scrutiny, acceptance to prove or disprove arguments regardless the status of the speaker, demand for theoretically anchored hypotheses, reliability of data, application of credible methods, inherent logical consistency of the work, willingness to rework one's findings, etc.

With the increased strategical and commercial impact of science, such traditions are evaporating for the sake of circumscribing and monopolizing the use of knowledge. This is particularly true for breaking research in technology and big pharma in closed institutions, where foreseen benefits are astronomical in terms of revenues and strategic power. In absolute terms, scientists may be more and more knowledgeable, but in relative terms, the opposite prevails as research and development is out of reach for the public, and for most researchers as well.

#### **4. Ambience**

The lexical definition of ambience is a feeling or mood associated with a particular place. Environment is a token of history, and an analysis may bring understanding of the rationale that drives the present development of ambient intelligence. Firstly, ambience relates to perceived integrity of the environment, but in what sense? Secondly, what changes are obvious when comparing the way production of modern urban environment is organized compared with the traditional ways of building and planning? Thirdly, how does urban form indicate the rationale of economics as well as social and political control?
