This post was long and winding, and didn't seem to deliver much. This might just be because I was tired. Either way it certainly didn't deliver on either of its titles.

I quit trying to read the post half way through. Don't spent at least half of a long post explaining how you came to think about the topic in question!

If it's true that moral decisions cannot be made on a rational basis, then it should be impossible for me to find an example of a moral decision which was made rationally, right?

All decisions are in a sense "moral decisions". You should distinguish the process of decision-making from the question of figuring out your values. You can't define values "on rational basis", but you use a rational process to figure out what your values actually are, and to construct a plan towards achieving given values (based, in particular, on epistemically rational understanding of the world).

I gave you an upvote because the topics you consider are important ones, things I have been thinking about myself recently. But I have to agree with the other commenters that you might have made the posting a bit shorter and the reasoning a bit tighter. But that is enough about you and your ideas. Lets talk about me and my ideas. :)

The remainder of this comment deals with my take on a couple of issues you raise.

The first issue is whether moral-value opinions, judgments, and reasonings can be evaluated as "rational" vs "irrational". I think they can be. Compare to epistemic opinions, judgments, and reasonings. We define a collection of probability assignments to be rational if they are consistent; if they are Bayesian updates from a fairly arbitrary set of priors; updates based on evidence. We may suspect, with Jaynes, that there is some rational objective methodology for choosing priors, but since we don't yet know of any perfect such methodology, we don't insist upon it.

Similarly, in the field of values (even moral values) we can define moral rationality as a kind of consistency of moral judgments, even if we do not yet know of a valid and objective methodology for choosing "moral priors" or "fundamental moral preferences". That is, we may not yet be able to recognize moral rationality, but, like Potter Stewart regarding pornography, we certainly know moral irrationality when we see it.

Your second major theme seems to be whether we can criticize conversations as rational or irrational. My opinion is that if we want to extend "rational" from agents and their methods to conversations, then maybe we need to view a conversation as a method of some agent. That is, we need to see the conversation as part of the decision-making methodology of some collective entity. And then we need to ask whether the conversation does, in fact, lead to the consequence that the collective entity in question makes good decisions.

Although this approach forces us into a long and difficult research program regarding the properties of collectives and their decision making (Hmmm. Didn't they give Ken Arrow a Nobel prize for doing something related to this?), I think that it is the right direction to go on this question, rather than just putting together lists of practices that might improve public policy debate in this country. As much as I agree that public policy debate sorely needs improvement.

I gave you an upvote because the topics you consider are important ones, things I have been thinking about myself recently. But I have to agree with the other commenters that you might have made the posting a bit shorter and the reasoning a bit tighter. But that is enough about you and your ideas. Lets talk about me and my ideas. :)

The remainder of this comment deals with my take on a couple of issues you raise.

The first issue is whether moral-value opinions, judgments, and reasonings can be evaluated as "rational" vs "irrational". I think they can be. Compare to epistemic opinions, judgments, and reasonings. We define a collection of probability assignments to be rational if they are consistent; if they are Bayesian updates from a fairly arbitrary set of priors; updates based on evidence. We may suspect, with Jaynes, that there is some rational objective methodology for choosing priors, but since we don't yet know of any perfect such methodology, we don't insist upon it.

Similarly, in the field of values (even moral values) we can define moral rationality as a kind of consistency of moral judgments, even if we do not yet know of a valid and objective methodology for choosing "moral priors" or "fundamental moral preferences". That is, we may not yet be able to recognize moral rationality, but, like Potter Stewart regarding pornography, we certainly know moral irrationality when we see it.

Your second major theme seems to be whether we can criticize conversations as rational or irrational. My opinion is that if we want to extend "rational" from agents and their methods to conversations, then maybe we need to view a conversation as a method of some agent. That is, we need to see the conversation as part of the decision-making methodology of some collective entity. And then we need to ask whether the conversation does, in fact, lead to the consequence that the collective entity in question makes good decisions.

Although this approach forces us into a long and difficult research program regarding the properties of collectives and their decision making (Hmmm. Didn't they give Ken Arrow a Nobel prize for doing something related to this?), I think that it is the right direction to go on this question, rather than just putting together lists of practices that might improve public policy debate in this country. As much as I agree that public policy debate sorely needs improvement.

I propose that the key elements of a rational conversation are (where "you" refers collectively to all participants):

you must use only documented reasoning processes: using the best known process(es) for a given class of problem stating clearly which particular process(es) you use documenting any new processes you use

making every reasonable effort to verify that:

your inputs are reasonably accurate, and there are no other reasoning processes which might be better suited to this class of problem, and there are no significant flaws in in your application of the reasoning processes you are using, and there are no significant inputs you are ignoring

This definition seems to imply that something can only be rational if an immense amount of time and research is dedicated to it. But I can say something off the cuff, with no more of a reasoning process than "this was the output of my black-box intuition", and be rational. All that's required is that my intuition was accurate in that particular instance, and I reasonably expected it to be accurate with high enough probability relative to the importance of the remark. See How Much Thought.

I'm fine with that distinction but it doesn't change my point. Why do external terminal values have to be rational? What does it mean for a value to be rational?

Can you just answer those two questions?

I'm not sure I understand your issue. If this response doesn't work you may have to reexplain.

If you have some values-- say happiness-- then there can be irrational ways of evaluating actions in terms of those values. So if I'm concerned with happiness but only look at the effects of the action on my sneakers, and not the emotions of people, well that seems irrational if happiness is really what I care about. Certainly there are actions which can either be consistent or inconsistent with some set of values and taking actions that are inconsistent with your values is irrational. What I don't see is what it could mean for those values to be rational or irrational in the first place. I don't think people "decide" on terminal values in the way they decide on breakfast or to give to some charity over another.

Does that address your concern?

So how do you rationally decide if an action is right or wrong? -- or are you saying you can't do this?

There is no such thing as "rationally deciding if an action is right or wrong". This has nothing to do with particularism. It's just a metaethical position. I don't know what can be rational or irrational about morality.

Again though, I'm not a particularist, I do have principles I can apply if I don't have strong intuitions. A particularist only has her intuitions.

Also, just to be clear: you are saying that you do not believe rightness or wrongness of an action ultimately derives from whether or not it does harm? ("Harm" being the more common term; I tried to refine it a bit as "personally-defined suffering", but I think you're disagreeing with the larger idea -- not my refinement of it.)

I don't believe my own morality can be reduced to language about harm. I'm not sure what "ultimately derives" means but I suspect my answer is no. My morality happens to have a lot to do with harm (again, I'm a Haidtian liberal). But I don't think that makes my morality more rational than a morality that is less about harm. There is no such thing a "rational" or "irrational" morality only moralities I find silly or abhorrent.

I tried to make it quite clear that I do care about the rest of the world; the fact that I don't yet have a solution for them (and am therefore not offering one) does not negate this.

If it's the case that you care about the rest of the world then I don't think you realize how non-ideal your prescriptions are. You're basically advocating for redistributing wealth from part of the global upper class to part of the global middle class and ignoring those experiencing the most pain and the most injustice.

I also tried to make it quite clear that my solution for Americans must not come at the price of harming others in the world, and that (further) I believe that as long as it avoids this, it may be of some benefit to the rest of the world as we will not be allowing unused resources to languish in the hands of the very richest people (who really don't need them) -- leaving the philanthropists among us free to focus on poverty worldwide rather than domestically.

But of course it comes at the price of harming the rest of the world. You're advocating sacrificing political resources to pass legislation. Those resources are to some extent limited which means you're decreasing the chances of or at least delaying changes in policy which would actually benefit the poorest. Moreover, social entitlements are notoriously impossible to overturn which means you're putting all this capital in a place we can't take it from to give to the people who really need it. Shoot, at least the mega-rich are sometimes using their money to invest in developing countries.

This doesn't even get us into preventing existential risk. When ever you have a utility-like morality using resources inefficiently is about as bad as actively doing harm.

You seem to be arguing, however, that actions can be wrong without causing any demonstrable harm. Can you give an example?

None you'll agree with! You've already said your morality is about preventing harm! But like it or not there are people who really don't care about suffering outside their own country. There are people who thing gay marriage is wrong no matter what effects it has on society (just as there are those, like me, who think it should be legal even if it damages society). There are those who do not believe we should criticize our leader under certain circumstances. There are those who believe our elders deserve respect above and beyond what they deserve as humans. There are those who believe sex outside of marriage is wrong. There are those who believe eating cow is immoral; there are others who believe eating cow is delicious. None of these people are necessarily rational or irrational.

I'll reiterate one question: What do you mean by rational in "rational morality"?

The classic one is euthanasia.