Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Javier Echeverría & José Francisco Álvarez (2008). Bounded Rationality in Social Sciences. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 96 (1):173-189.Empirical research on Rational Choice Theory has brought up two focus of the economics laws problem. On one hand, we find the authors who state that the neoclassical economics laws are explanatory and predictive on specific cases: in transparent contexts in which the standard rationality operates successfully. On the other hand, we find the authors who state that the descriptive theories of the rational choice opens up a research path in which fundamental principles of the neoclassical building could be questioned. Both view points have generated an important standard Rational Choice Theory revision what has produced the so called descriptive view point . It implies understanding that most of the choices take place under risky or uncertainty conditions and, that, these choices are far more complex than the normative Rational Choice Theory supposes. This article's main goal is to expand the descriptive point of view in rational choice, theorizing how some factors, coming from the social and cultural environment, operate within the rational choice. Into space of this research essay we find the debatable question of whether these sort of proposals expands the explanation of the deviation of the rational choice normative theory, and that, of the disturbing causes of the microeconomics laws, or they call into question fundamental principles of these laws and therefore they are opening the possibility to focus some economics issues in a new different manner.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
| Export citation | Scholar | At my library 
Similar books and articles
Rational choice theories have been falsified by experimental tests of economic behavior and have not been supported by analyses of behavior in the market. Politics is an even less fertile field of application for rational choice theories because politics deals with ends as well as means, thus preventing ends?means rationality; voters have partisan loyalties often ?fixed? in adolescence; political benefits have no common unit of measurement; ?rational ignorance? inhibits rational choices; and there is no market?like feedback to facilitate learning. Research comparing public and private efficiency does not support rational choice. Ironically, while law and business schools are now employing better microeconomic theories, political scientists are taking up rational choice theory, regardless of the disconfirming evidence.
No categories
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The mathematical tools of game theory are frequently used in the social sciences and economic consultancy. But how do they explain social phenomena and support prescriptive judgments? And is the use of game theory really necessary? I analyze the logical form of explanatory and prescriptive game theoretical statements, and argue for two claims: (1) explanatory game theory can and should be reduced to rational choice theory in all cases; and (2) prescriptive game theory gives bad advice in some cases, is reducible to rational choice theory in other cases, while it makes no sense in yet other cases.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: pos.sagepub.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: pos.sagepub.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In their survey of empirical research based on rational choice theory, Don Green and Ian Shapiro point to a list of methodological deficiencies or ?pathologies.? The main problem with Green and Shapiro's list lies in the standards they use to evaluate the achievements of rational choice theory. These standards are derived from a view of empirical research that is deeply questionable and, in the stated form, inconsistent with both standard insights in contemporary philosophy of science and the established practice in the most successful empirical sciences.
No categories
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory is a valuable survey and critique of research in the rational choice tradition, but one that slights that tradition's past and potential contributions to the study of politics. The authors rightly note limitations of rational choice theory but understate what it has to offer political scientists, for they fail to focus clearly on its essentials; adopt too narrow a basis for evaluating scholarship; and wrongly identify rational choice theory with the shortcomings of some scholarship that makes use of it.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Although rational choice theory has enjoyed only modest predictive success, it provides a powerful explanatory mechanism for social processes involving strategic interaction among individuals and it stimulates interesting empirical inquiries. Rather than present competing theories to compare against rational choice, Don Green and Ian Shapiro have merely alluded to alternative explanatory variables such as culture, institutions, and social norms, without showing either how these factors can be incorporated into a more powerful theory, or how they are inconsistent with rational choice theory. It is likely that any eventual theory of the origin and maintenance of social institutions, norms, and values will have to reserve a central place for rational action.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The problem of rational theory-choice is the problem of whether choice of theory by a scientist may be objectively rational in the absence of an invariant scientific method. In this paper I offer a solution to the problem, but the solution I propose may come as something of a surprise. For I wish to argue that the work of the very authors who have put the rationality of such choice in question, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, contains all that is needed to solve the problem.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: philosophy.unimelb.edu.au | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: philosophy.unimelb.edu.au | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In this major contribution to the theory of rational choice the author sets out the foundations of rational choice, and then sketches a dynamic choice framework in which principles of ordering and independence follow from a number of apparently plausible conditions. However there is potential conflict among these conditions, and when they are weakened to avoid it, the usual foundations of rational choice no longer prevail. The thrust of the argument is to suggest that the theory of rational choice is less determinate than many suppose.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Social identity poses one of the most important challenges to rational choice theory, but rational choice theorists do not hold a common position regarding identity. On one hand, externalist rational choice ignores the concept of identity or reduces it to revealed preferences. On the other hand, internalist rational choice considers identity as a key concept in explaining social action because it permits expressive motivations to be included in the models. However, internalist theorists tend to reduce identity to desire—the desire of a person to express his or her social being. From an internalist point of view, that is, from a viewpoint in which not only desires but also beliefs play a key role in social explanations as mental entities, this article rejects externalist reductionism and proposes a redefinition of social identity as a net of beliefs about oneself, beliefs that are indexical, robust, and socially shaped.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: pos.sagepub.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: pos.sagepub.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The article reconsiders the generalization of neoclassical economics by modern rational choice theory. Hence, it reexamines the possible theoretical grounds or lack thereof within neoclassical economics for economic imperialism implied in much of rational choice theory. Some indicative instances of rational choice theory's generalization of neoclassical economics are reviewed. The main portion of the article addresses the question as to whether neoclassical economics allows its generalization in rational choice theory and thus legitimizes economic imperialism. Presented are a number of pertinent theoretical reasons why neoclassical economics does not fully justify its generalization into rational choice as a general social theory, particularly into an overarching economic approach to social action and society. Also discussed are some theoretical implications of the rational choice generalization of neoclassical economics. The main contribution of the article is to detect lack of a strong theoretical rationale in much of neoclassical economics for rational choice theory's manifest or latent economic imperialism.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The descriptive viewpoint in rational choice has generated an important Standard Rational Choice Theory revision. This viewpoint has meant the introduction of relevant psychological considerations that Rational Choice Theory tied to the neoclassical economics is unable to heed In this paper I suggest a way to expand the descriptive viewpoint by theorizing how some factors, coming from the social and cultural environment, operate within rational choice. That troublesome issue concerning the overall validity of economic laws is also a question here; specifically, if these descriptive proposals expand the explanation of the disturbing causes of economic laws, or if they actually call into question their fundamental principles, encouraging consideration of some economic issues in a quite new, different manner.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Javier Echeverría & José Francisco Álvarez, Bounded rationality in social sciences
 Back
All discussions
Start a new thread
|
There are no threads in this forum |
Nothing in this forum yet.
