Searle’s tool for understanding culture, law and society is the opposition between brute reality and institutional reality, or in other words between: observer-independent features of the world, such as force, mass and gravitational attraction, and observer-relative features of the world, such as money, property, marriage and government. The question posed here is: under which of these two headings do moral concepts fall? This is an important question because there are moral facts – for example pertaining to guilt and responsibility – (...) which hover uncomfortably close to the boundary between the observer-relative and the observer-independent. By means of a thought experiment involving an imagined Chinese society in which guilt is determined by the random throwing of sticks, I seek to show that moral concepts threaten the foundations of Searle’s philosophy of social reality. (shrink)

The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false. He then presents an alternative theory of the role of rationality in thought and action. A central point of Searle's theory is that only irrational actions are directly caused by beliefs and desires—for example, the actions of a (...) person in the grip of an obsession or addiction. In most cases of rational action, there is a gap between the motivating desire and the actual decision making. The traditional name for this gap is "freedom of the will." According to Searle, all rational activity presupposes free will. For rationality is possible only where one has a choice among various rational as well as irrational options. Unlike many philosophical tracts, Rationality in Action invites the reader to apply the author's ideas to everyday life. Searle shows, for example, that contrary to the traditional philosophical view, weakness of will is very common. He also points out the absurdity of the claim that rational decision making always starts from a consistent set of desires. Rational decision making, he argues, is often about choosing between conflicting reasons for action. In fact, humans are distinguished by their ability to be rationally motivated by desire-independent reasons for action. Extending his theory of rationality to the self, Searle shows how rational deliberation presupposes an irreducible notion of the self. He also reveals the idea of free will to be essentially a thesis of how the brain works. (shrink)

This target article is concerned with the implications of the surprisingly different experimental practices in economics and in areas of psychology relevant to both economists and psychologists, such as behavioral decision making. We consider four features of experimentation in economics, namely, script enactment, repeated trials, performance-based monetary payments, and the proscription against deception, and compare them to experimental practices in psychology, primarily in the area of behavioral decision making. Whereas economists bring a precisely defined “script” to experiments for participants to (...) enact, psychologists often do not provide such a script, leaving participants to infer what choices the situation affords. By often using repeated experimental trials, economists allow participants to learn about the task and the environment; psychologists typically do not. Economists generally pay participants on the basis of clearly defined performance criteria; psychologists usually pay a flat fee or grant a fixed amount of course credit. Economists virtually never deceive participants; psychologists, especially in some areas of inquiry, often do. We argue that experimental standards in economics are regulatory in that they allow for little variation between the experimental practices of individual researchers. The experimental standards in psychology, by contrast, are comparatively laissez-faire. We believe that the wider range of experimental practices in psychology reflects a lack of procedural regularity that may contribute to the variability of empirical findings in the research fields under consideration. We conclude with a call for more research on the consequences of methodological preferences, such as the use on monetary payments, and propose a “do-it-both-ways” rule regarding the enactment of scripts, repetition of trials, and performance-based monetary payments. We also argue, on pragmatic grounds, that the default practice should be not to deceive participants. Key Words: behavioral decision making; cognitive illusions; deception; experimental design; experimental economics; experimental practices; financial incentives; learning; role playing. (shrink)

SummaryNeither an infant one week old nor a snail is a rational creature. If the infant survives long enough, he will probably become rational, while this is not true of the snail. If we like, we may say of the infant from the start that he is a rational creature because he will probably become rational if he survives, or because he belongs to a species with this capacity. Whichever way we talk, there remains the difference, with respect to rationality, (...) between the infant and the snail on one hand, and the normal adult person on the other; this difference is discussed here.The difference consists, it is argued, in the having of propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, intention and shame. This raises the question how to tell when a creature has propositional attitudes; snails, we may agree, do not, but how about dogs or chimpanzees? The question is not empirical; the question is what sort of empirical evidence is relevant to deciding when a creature has propositional attitudes.It is next contended that language is a necessary concomitant of any of the propositional attitudes. This idea is not new, but there seem to be few arguments in its favor in the literature; one is attempted here.Crucial to the considerations advanced is the idea that belief depends on having the concept of objective truth, and that this comes only with language.RéuméNi un bébé d'une semaine, ni un serpent ne sont des créatures rationnelles. Si le bébé survit assez longtemps, il deviendra probablement rationnel, mais ce n'est pas vrai pour le serpent. Sil'on veut, on peut dire d'emblee du bébé qu'il est une créature rationnelle parce qu'il le deviendra s'il survit ou parce qu'il appartient à une espèce qui possède cette faculté. Quoi qu'on dise, la différence subsiste, en ce qui concerné la rationalité, entre le bébé et le serpent d'une part, la per‐sonne adulte normale de lcar;autre, et c'est cette différence qui sera discutée ici.La différence consiste, selon l'auteur, en une capacityé d'avoir des attitudes propositionnelles telles que la croyance, le désir, l'intention et la honte. Ceci pose la question de savoir quand on peut dire qu'une créature a des attitudes propositionnelles; on peut se mettre d'accord sur le fait que les serpents n'en ont pas, mais qu'en est‐il des chiens et des chimpanzés? La question n'est pas empirique, elle est de savoir quelle donnée empirique va décider si oui ou non une créature a des attitudes propositionnelles.L'auteur prétend que les attitudes propositionnelles s'accompagnent nécessairement du langage. Cette idèe n'est pas nouvelle, mais il semble qu'il y a peu d'arguments qui la soutiennent dans la littérature. On en trouvera un ici, où l'on montre qu'un élément crucial de a croyance dépend de l'acquisition du concept de vérité objective, qui ne se développe qu'avec le langage.ZusammenfassungWeder ein eine Woche altes Kind noch eine Schlange sind rationale Wesen. Wenn das Kind lange genug überlebt, wird es sich wahrscheinlich zu einem vernünftigen Wesen entwickeln, wäh‐rend das für die Schlange nicht zutrifft. Wenn wir wollen, können wir vom Kind sagen, dass es von Anfang an cin rationales Wesen ist, weil es im Fallc des Ubcrlebens vernünftig werden wird oder weil es zu einer Spezies mit dieser Fähigkeit gehört. Wie auch immer wir das ausdrücken, bleibt bezüglich der Rationalität der Unterschied zwischen dem Kind und der Schlange einerseits und der erwachsenen Person andererseits zurück. Dieser Unterschied wird hier diskutiert.Es wird argumentiert, dass der Unterschied in der Fähigkeit besteht, psychologische Haltun‐gen wie Glauben, Begierden, Absichten und Scham zu haben. Damit erhebt sich die Frage, wie man entscheiden kann, wann ein Wesen solchc Einstellungcn hat; Schlangen, wird man zugeben, haben keine; wie steht es aber mit Hunden Oder Schimpansen? Die Frage ist keine empirische, sondern betrifft die Frage, welche Art von empirischen Belegen für den Entscheid relevant ist, ob ein Wesen derartige Einstellungen hat.Es wird die These aufgestellt, dass Sprachen ein notwendiger Begleitumstand einer jeglichen propositionalen Haltung ist. Der Gedanke ist zwar nicht neu, aber es finden sich wenige Argu‐mente zu seiner Stützung in der Literatur; eines wird hier ausgeführt.Entscheidend für die vorgelegten Betrachtungen ist die Auffassung, wonach Glaube vom Begriff der objektiven Wahrheit abhängt, und dieser kommt erst mit der Sprache. (shrink)

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart invites readers to embark on a new journey into a land of rationality that differs from the familiar territory of cognitive science and economics. Traditional views of rationality tend to see decision makers as possessing superhuman powers of reason, limitless knowledge, and all of eternity in which to ponder choices. To understand decisions in the real world, we need a different, more psychologically plausible notion of rationality, and this book provides it. It is about (...) fast and frugal heuristics--simple rules for making decisions when time is pressing and deep thought an unaffordable luxury. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices, classifications, and predictions by employing bounded rationality. But when and how can such fast and frugal heuristics work? Can judgments based simply on one good reason be as accurate as those based on many reasons? Could less knowledge even lead to systematically better predictions than more knowledge? Simple Heuristics explores these questions, developing computational models of heuristics and testing them through experiments and analyses. It shows how fast and frugal heuristics can produce adaptive decisions in situations as varied as choosing a mate, dividing resources among offspring, predicting high school drop out rates, and playing the stock market. As an interdisciplinary work that is both useful and engaging, this book will appeal to a wide audience. It is ideal for researchers in cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science, as well as in economics and artificial intelligence. It will also inspire anyone interested in simply making good decisions. (shrink)

Then you have a look around, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening to us—I mean the people who think that nothing exists but what they can grasp with both hands; people who refuse to admit that actions and processes and the invisible world in general have any place in reality.