Social Dimensions of Individualistic Rationality (original) (raw)

Rational After All: Toward an Improved Model of Rationality in Economics

2011

In this paper we critically review the literature on rational choice theory (RCT) and the critical approaches to it. We will present a concise description of the theory as defended by Gary Becker, Richard Posner and James Coleman (as well as others) at the University of Chicago from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, we will discuss its epistemological assumptions and predictions and we will also examine the most important arguments against it. We will give our main emphasis on the critique coming from behavioral economics and we will try to see if humans’ supposed cognitive constraints lead to a failure of rationality or if they constitute rational responses to the scarcity of information, time and energy. In our discussion we will use findings from experimental economics and the sciences of the brain, especially evolutionary psychology and neuroeconomics. Our intention is to present an improved theory of rational choice that, informed from the above discussion, will be descriptively more accurate but without losing its predicting power. Moreover, we will conclude by trying to answer the most important related policy question: when rationality seems to fail, does this necessarily imply that agents should be paternalistically protected against themselves? We will briefly defend the thesis that, in the long-run, it is much better for them and the society at large for the individual decision makers to be let alone to develop rational responses to their cognitive constraints. Keywords: Rational Choice Theory, Behavioral Economics, Evolutionary Psychology, Rationality, Cognition, Paternalism JEL Classification: A10, A12, D01, D03, B41, D81

Dilemma of collective and individual rationality

KANT, 2020

The article discusses the dichotomies of concepts encountered in socio-economic research when constructing a unified theory of human activity. These include the dichotomy of "action and structure" when it comes to embedding a person in a social order; "Egoism and altruism" in the study of rational human behavior in society, as well as the dichotomy of various forms of action such as instrumental and communication action. In connection with this problem, the question arises of the possibility of their study in the framework of incommensurable forms of rationality - "individual and collective".

Economic Rationality: An Evaluation

The neoclassical thought constitute the base of the most dominant school in the discipline of economics, and economic rationality of an individual agent is the principal postulate of such a thought associated with neoclassical economics. The postulate of rationality has been questioned over the years. There have always been doubts expressed against such a conception of the individual human actor transacting business in a market. The theoretical postulate has often been pitched against not only the alternative theoretical frameworks but also the empirical judgments arrived at in the background of a broader canvas of the actual social economy.

An Approach to the Analysis of the Role of Rationality in Social Action

2018

The paper approaches the problem of rationality on the basis of the theory of action elaborated in Parsons ’ The Structure of Social Action of 1937. The voluntaristic action frame of reference, as it was called, implies the opportunity of choice in the course of actions. Predictability of the consequences of a course of action, as a prerequisite of choice, requires rational empirical knowledge and logical consistency. Choices are also dependent on norms and values, as well as on affective meanings, the balancing of which requires complex calculations of costs and advantages or utilities. Appreciation of rational knowledge implies – and depends upon – a commitment to norms of rationality. The limits of rationality are set by irrationality in the sense of deviance from normative standards, but also by non-rational and non-logical factors such as tradition, religion, or art. The work of Pareto is taken as an important reference point as it is acknowledged to be “the most ambitious atte...

Self-Interest and Rationality: The Modern Connection

2018

This chapter engages in a detailed examination of the modern view of economic rationality, as represented in the Rational Choice Theory of human behavior. The chapter develops a thorough critique of this view of economic rationality, highlighting its many contradictions and calamities, with a special focus on the opinions of Amartya Sen, Andre Gorz, and Alasdair MacIntyre.

The Rational Foundations of Economic Behaviour

1996

This paper is a useful integration of research that Professor Kahneman has conducted with several co-authors. The phenomena of individual decisions is a source of nagging curiosity for many sciences, applications of sciences, and philosophy. What he has to say should be of great interest to a very large research community. In discussing his paper I will narrow the perspective to economics and to a lesser extent political science, in the hope of facilitating better and more complete understanding of the fundamental and important perspective that he and his co-authors bring to those particular sciences. At the outset I should say that I do not like the word "rationality" used in the title. Consequently, I am not particularly sympathetic with Kahneman's overall purpose to "argue for an enriched definition of rationality". The concept lacks scientific precision and as a result is a source of needless controversy and misunderstandings. Many theoreticians have attempted to eliminate the inherent vagueness by defining types. Aizerman et.al. (1985) for example, connects the concept of rationality to notions of "optimality" and then produces vastly different concepts of optimality and substantially generalizes classical scalar optimization and the associated use of binary relations over states. The concept of rationality can be connected with notions of logic or it can be