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Gigerenzer's Evolutionary Arguments against Rational Choice Theory: An Assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Armin W. Schulz
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Abstract

I critically discuss a recent innovation in the debate surrounding the plausibility of rational choice theory (RCT): the appeal to evolutionary theory. Specifically, I assess Gigerenzer and colleagues’ claim that considerations based on natural selection show that, instead of making decisions in a RCT-like way, we rely on ‘simple heuristics’. As I try to make clearer here, though, Gigerenzer and colleagues’ arguments are unconvincing: we lack the needed information about our past to determine whether the premises on which they are built are true—and, hence, we cannot tell whether they, in fact, speak against RCT.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 1272 - 1282
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Elliott Sober, Dan Hausman, Larry Shapiro, Katie Steele, and Gerd Gigerenzer for helpful comments on previous versions of this article.

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